Internet Databases

1. Internet Databases SOC 622 Dr. Tom Kersen

2. JSU library catalog Government Information Special Collections Latest Acquisitions Other Library Catalogs Databases EBSCOhost JSTOR Periodical Holdings Other Services Mississippi Public Library Interlibrary Loan Distance Learning Guides by discipline Bibliographic Retrieval & Literature Reviews

3. Literature Review • The purpose of a literature review in a research proposal is to examine how others have studied the problem that is the focus of the proposal • Without understanding what has been previously studied, we cannot determine how our study will advance knowledge about the problem

4. What is a review of the literature? • As a piece of writing, the literature review must be defined by a guiding concept (e.g., your research objective, the problem or issue you are discussing, or your argumentative thesis). • It is not just a descriptive list of the material available, or a set of summaries.

5. What you gain from literature review? • Information seeking: the ability to scan the literature efficiently, using manual or computerized methods, to identify a set of useful articles and books • Critical appraisal: the ability to apply principles of analysis to identify unbiased and valid studies

6. A literature review must do these things • be organized around and related directly to the thesis or research question you are developing • synthesize results into a summary of what is and is not known – a-state-of-the-art • identify areas of controversy in the literature • formulate questions that need further research

7. Why do I need a literature review? • The literature review is integral to the whole thesis; it is not just a routine step taken to fulfill formal requirements. • A lit review • demonstrates that you know the field • justifies the reason for your research • allows you to establish your theoretical framework and methodological focus

8. Literature Review • There are several purposes for the literature review • 1) It shares the results of of other studies that are closely related to the current study • 2) It relates a study to the larger, ongoing study of a topic • 3) It provides a framework for evaluating the study and its findings

9. How to plan a literature review • Students often will report that there is no literature on a topic they are interested in • Such a conclusion is almost always incorrect, and results from too much specificity in the attempted literature search

10. Planning a literature review • To find literature to include in your review, use the constructs of interest in your study, or the variables that represent them, as search terms. INEQUALITY IVs Or Influencers of DV INC OCC EDU

11. Finding literature on a topic • If your study examines a particular theory, then search the literature for studies related to the theory • Using these broad search terms should yield a substantial number of studies. What theoretical approach informs my study?

12. Narrowing the search • The goal of a literature review is to examine studies that are most relevant to the problem you want to study • Using the strategies suggested probably will result in too many studies, some of which are not really relevant to your area of interest

13. Narrowing the literature review focus • One way to limit the range of studies you include is to limit the search to the most recent 5 years (or even more recent, if the topic is extensively studied) • Research has trends, and sometimes what you are interested in studying may not have been recently studied. You may have to go back 10 or even more years to find literature

14. Narrowing the search • Another way to limit the review is to include the population you are most interested in as part of the search criteria ADULTS IN LABOR FORCE ADULTS IN BUREAUCRATIC LABOR FORCE ADULTS IN MILITARY IN ARMY

15. Where to look • There are many literature data bases to search • JSTOR, EBSCO Host, UNACAT, etc. • Do not use • Popular press. Reporters, politicians, ministers, and your parents are not social scientists!!!! • Not nonacademic institutions, i.e., Focus on the Family, etc. Remember the Jerry Mcguire Rule! • Generally speaking the WWW • When in doubt, ask.

16. Looking for literature • Once you have a list of promising articles, examine the abstracts of these articles. This can often help you to focus on the studies most relevant to your work,and to weed out the least interesting or relevant. • After you select the most relevant studies, collect copies of the articles.

17. Looking for literature • Find the few articles that are most similar to what you want to study, or seem most closely related to the constructs you are investigating. • Examine the studies mentioned in these articles and the reference lists to find more literature

18. Bibliography Pages Eureka, here is one that fits with my research question!!

19. Questions to ask about your literature review. • Have I critically analyzedthe literature I use? Do I follow through a set of concepts and questions, comparing items to each other in the ways they deal with them? • Instead of just listing and summarizing items, do I assess them, discussing strengths and weaknesses? • Have I cited and discussed studies contrary to my perspective? • Will the reader find my literature review relevant, appropriate, and useful?

20. Lit Review Matrix USE THIS TOOL! • The matrix will allow you to systematically group articles • It will help you identify dependent and independent variables used or not used • It will help you in the process of generating hypotheses • It will identify common findings, strengths, and weaknesses of prior research

21. Major Databases • ICPSR • Population • U.S. Census Bureau • Health • CDC Wonder • Labor • Other • DataFerrett

22. The Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) • Established in 1962, • Is an integral part of the infrastructure of social science research. • ICPSR maintains and provides access to a vast archive of social science data for research and instruction, and offers training in quantitative methods to facilitate effective data use. • To ensure that data resources are available to future generations of scholars, ICPSR preserves data, migrating them to new storage media as changes in technology warrant. • In addition, ICPSR provides user support to assist researchers in identifying relevant data for analysis and in conducting their research projects.

23. Centers for Disease Control • one of the 13 major operating components of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) • Founded in 1946 to help control malaria

24. CDC Organization

25. CDC Wonder • Provides access to a wide array of public health information. • CDC WONDER, developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), is an integrated information and communication system for public health. Its purposes are: • To promote information-driven decision making by placing timely, useful facts in the hands of public health practitioners and researchers, and • To provide the general public with access to specific and detailed information from CDC. • http://wonder.cdc.gov/

26. CDC Wonder • Query numeric data sets on CDC's mainframe and other computers, via "fill-in-the blank" web pages. • Public-use data sets about mortality (deaths), cancer incidence, HIV and AIDS, behavioral risk factors, diabetes, natality (births), census data and many other topics are available for query, and the requested data are readily summarized and analyzed. • The data is ready for use in desktop applications such as word processors, spreadsheet programs, or statistical and geographic analysis packages. • File formats available include plain text (ASCII), web pages (HTML), and spreadsheet files (Comma or Tab Separated Values). • All of these facilities are menu-driven, and require no special computer expertise.

27. Behavior Risk Factor Surveys (BRFSS) Birth Defects Breast & Cervical Cancer Disease Statistics Health Data and Research Health Statistics Reports 1994 to 2007 Resources and links Immunization Registry Injury Surveillance Marriage Licenses STD/HIV Vital Records West Nile Virus Youth Behavior Survey Youth Tobacco Survey Mississippi Department of Health

28. Economics & Labor • Bureau of Economic Analysis • Bureau of Labor Statistics • Mississippi Department of Employment Security

29. DataFerrett • The DataFerrett is a data mining tool that accesses data stored in TheDataWeb through the internet. DataFerrett can be installed as an application on your desktop or used a java applet with an internet browser. • DataFerrett is mainly compatible with Windows operating systems: 95, 98, 2000, NT, ME and XP. • The DataFerrett is currently being updated to Version 1.3.2.

30. DataFerrett • Added ability to access codebook from spreadsheet window. • Added the ability to create recodes of geography (concatenated) variables. • Topic lists are now specific for selected dataset time periods. • Added the ability to handle multi-dimensional time series data. • Added the ability to define hierarchical code sets and expand them in the spreadsheet.