Session #1 - CJ 3170: Criminal Justice Research Methods - Prof. Hiropoulos Ramatlhodi

Keywords

Keywords are the main concepts of your research question, broken down into 2-5 words to use in your search. The main concepts can be broken down further into synonyms, antonyms, or subtopics. Try variations of keywords when searching to find the combination that works best for your topic.

Sample Research Question broken down into keywords.

Databases to Start Your Criminal Justice Research

CQ Researcher
Excellent "pro/con" analysis of key social, economic, and policy issues. Weekly issues cover a new topic in a 20-30 page report, including a history of the issue, the current debate with likely outcomes, and a bibliography of key sources. Covers 1991 - present.
CREDO Reference This link opens in a new window
Academic encyclopedia and dictionary entries defining and introducing topics in all disciplines.
Academic Search + Omnifile
Concurrent searching in Academic Search Premier and Omnifile Mega for full-text articles, including peer-reviewed titles; indexing and abstracts; and bibliographic citations. These scholarly collections offer information in nearly every area of academic study.
Criminal Justice Abstracts
Criminal Justice Abstracts includes bibliographic records covering essential areas related to criminal justice and criminology from around the world.
National Criminal Justice Reference Service Abstracts
Access more than 225,000 collection records and over 80,000 online resources, including all known Office of Justice Programs works.
Scopus
Search for articles from a very large but selective list of high-impact research journals. Provides complete reference list for covered journals, robust citation tracing tools and research metrics. Includes selected book chapters and conference proceedings.
Social Sciences Full Text
Social Sciences Full Text provides access to a wide assortment of the most important English-language social science journals. It includes full text of articles from journals dating as far back as 1995 and indexing and abstracts of periodicals dating as far back as 1983, which includes peer-reviewed resources covering the latest concepts, theories and methods from both applied and theoretical aspects of the social sciences.
Westlaw
Online legal research database that provides access to case law, state and federal statutes, administrative codes, newspaper and magazine articles, public records, law journals, law reviews, treatises, legal forms and other information resources.

Search Tips

Use the handout linked below for tips on finding articles for your research topic.

Article Search Tips

Getting the Text of Articles

Searching a database will provide citations to scholarly journal articles and other scientific research.

To access the full-article, look for links to:

If there are no full-text links, use Find It! to see if article is available in another library subscription.