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Literature Reviews in Sociology

Guidance, strategies and resources to support conducting & writing literature reviews in Sociology.

Search Strategies

In addition to using the best keywords, you can increase the effectiveness of your search by using:

  1. Boolean operators
  2. Phrase searching
  3. Truncation

Boolean Operators

Boolean operators, AND, OR, and NOT, are used to combine your keywords. 

And Venn Diagram with an arrow pointing to the area where the two circles overlapAND is used to connect different concepts: "social media" AND "protest movement"

Using AND to connect keywords will decrease your search result numbers, or narrow your search, because the database is searching for sources that contain all of the keywords connected by AND.

OR Venn Diagram with arrows pointed to both circlesOR is used to connect similar concepts: "social media" OR "social networking site" OR Facebook

Using OR to connect similar words will increase your search result numbers, or broaden your search, because the database is searching for sources that contain at least one of the keywords connected by OR.

Not Venn Diagram with an arrow pointing to just one circleNOT will remove any search results that contain a particular keyword: "social media" NOT Pinterest

Using NOT will decrease the number of search results, or narrow our search, because the database will exclude resources with the specified keyword(s) from the results list. 

Phrase Searching

quotation marksEnclose your keywords in quotation marks to search for an exact phrase:

  • "social media"
  • "supermassive black hole"

Truncation

asteriskTruncation allows you to account for words with variations.

The asterisk(*) is commonly used to truncate a keyword. Place the * where you would like to account for variation: 

  • educat* will retrieve: educate, educated, educating, educator, and education
  • *caution will retrieve caution, precaution
  • behavi*r will retrieve behavior, behaviour 

Not all databases support proximity searching. You can use these strategies in ProQuest databases such as Sociological Abstracts. 

pre/# is used to search for terms in proximity to each other in a specific order; # is replaced with the number of words permitted between the search terms.

Sample Search: parent* pre/2 educational (within 2 words & in order)

  • This would retrieve articles with no more than two words between parent* and educational (in this order) e.g. "Parent practices and educational achievement" OR "Parents on Educational Attainment" OR "Parental Values, Educational Attainment" etc.

w/# is used to search for terms in proximity to each other in any order; # is replaced with the number of words permitted between the search terms.

Sample Search: parent* w/3 educational (within 3 words & in any order)

  • This would retrieve articles with no more than three words between parent* and educational (in any order)  e.g. "Educational practices of parents" OR "Parents value motivation and education" OR "Educational attainments of Latino parents"

If results are too large or seem irrelevant, you can limit one or more search terms to a specific field.  For example, you can choose to search for important terms in the Title field. 

field searching in ProQuest

 

A common way to limit search results in PubMed is to use Title/Abstract field searching, which can be conducted using the Advanced Search function.

PubMed Title/Abstract field search example 

1. Utilize appropriate limiters and specific fields.

  • date limiter, articles only, title field etc.

2. Use terminology related to your topic.

  • from preliminary readings or reference material e.g. books from class, Credo, Oxford Reference
  • by skimming through initial search results
  • in considering the terminology of the time period

3. Join different terms with AND.  Join similar terms with OR.

  • gender AND propaganda
  • community OR society

4. Use truncation (often *) to look for variations of a term.

  • communit* to search for community OR communities

5. Search for a phrase using quotation marks.

  • "labor dispute"
  • "Pullman strike"
  • "social movement"
  • "San Joaquin Valley"

6. If you do not retrieve any results,

  • broaden your search. e.g. from Advertising to -->> Advertising OR "Mass media"
  • narrow your search e.g. "navy technology" to ---> a specific type of navy technology e.g. submarine
  • examine your terminology. Am I using appropriate search terms?
  • consider if the database is suitable. Does this database include the content I need?