Reading Primary Sources in Sociology

Advice on Reading Primary Sources in Sociology 

Karen Sternheimer's post on Everyday Sociology Blog:

1. Familiarize yourself with the journal

What journal published the article? When you know the answer to this question, you can figure out who the journal’s target audience is. Scholars who study gender? Race? All sociologists?

Knowing the target audience helps prepare you for any taken-for-granted information that an article may contain. For instance, in a subject-specific journal, an article might not explain something that scholars in that area would be expected to know, while an article in a more general sociology journal might.

It’s also useful to take a few minutes and peruse the table of contents of the journal online..

2. Read the title and abstract

The title will tell you the specific focus of the article, and the abstract—the short paragraph on the first page of the article—will give you a summary of the author(s)’ research question, method(s), and findings. This summary, along with the first page of the article, will tell you exactly what the article is about and the concepts and theories that it builds upon. You can use this brief selection to help you decide if the article will be useful for your project.

If you’re not sure if the article will be relevant, keep reading following the steps below.

3. Read the discussion and conclusions

Next, I recommend skipping to the end of the article where the author(s) will elaborate on the findings. How do they discuss the importance of what they found? Are these findings relevant for your work?

4. Read the subheadings

The subheadings in the articles may give you more information about the article’s focus. While it might contain traditional markers of sections such as methods, data, results, analysis and/or discussion and conclusions, there might be unique sections that provide more detail that can be useful.

5. Decide if you need to read more

At this point it is time to decide if you need more detailed information, and if so, what you need to know more about. You may choose to look at one or more of the sections below:

• Theoretical conversation is in the beginning

While some articles might have a subheading that says “introduction” or “literature review” or another indicator of a theoretical discussion—including a mention of a specific theoretical focus—there might not be any indication about the theoretical focus in other articles. Typically the author(s) will mention related works towards the beginning of the article. From here, you can not only learn about the scholarly work that they are building their study on, but you can find other potentially useful sources.

• Methodological discussion

While some articles are reviews or theoretical discussions, most journal articles are based on research and will provide a thorough discussion of exactly how they arrived at their findings. The methods discussion should be detailed enough so that if someone wanted to replicate this study, they could use the methods section as an instruction manual. This might be very helpful to you as you plan your own research.

• Data: tables, charts, graphs, quotes

Often the most intimidating aspect of a journal article is the quantitative results, especially the more complex statistical models that some authors may use. You don’t have to let this section deter you from using the article. Authors will explain in the text what their findings mean—typically most simply in the beginning and end of the article. It’s okay to skip this section if you aren’t comfortable interpreting all the complex tables and charts.

I do suggest giving some of the more basic descriptive statistics a try; even if you haven’t taken statistics, understanding the mean, median, and mode is easy enough, as is interpreting simple graphs.

Over time, reading journal articles gets easier, much like learning a new language. You’ll find that things that once made no sense to you begin to get clearer as you read more articles and learn more about sociology.

 

From the CBC Library:

Here is an explanation of the sections you are likely to find in a research journal:

1. Title A simple summary of the main idea of the paper. It should identify the main topic, the variables or theoretical issues under investigation and the relationship between them. (For example, the word "Outbound" would NOT be a title for a research journal article because it is not clear what the topic of the article is, but it may be a title for a magazine or newspaper article.)
2. Name of Author(s) and Institutional AffiliationAffiliations tell you which institution(s)/organization(s) that the author(s) belong to and it is usually where the research was conducted. It is common to have multiple authors who have collaborated on the research and the writing of the paper.
3. Abstract; A brief, non-evaluative, comprehensive summary of the contents of the article. 
4. Introduction; Usually the introduction describes: 

• What is the problem and how importance it is

• What have other researchers found out about the problem before (review of the relevant literature)

• What are the hypotheses and objectives of the study

• What are the research design and how is the design influenced by the hypotheses

• what are the theoretical and practical implications of the study

5. Methods; Describes in detail how the study was conducted. Enables the reader to evaluate the appropriateness of the methods used in the study and the reliability and validity of the results. Method usually includes the following subsections:

• Participants

• Materials

• Procedure

6. Results; Summarizes the data collected and the statistical treatment of the data. A brief statement of the main results or findings followed by a report in sufficient detail to justify the conclusions. It is common to find figures and tables in this section.
7. Discussion; Evaluates and interprets the implications of the results, especially with respect to the original hypothesis. Includes a clear statement of the support or non-support for the original hypothesis.
8. References; Lists works cited in the text of the article. Intended to get credit to the work of previous researchers and document statements made about literature. (Note: This part is almost always included at the end of a research article.)

From Professor Mikaila Mariel Lemonik Arthur:

How to Read a Sociological Journal Article

When you start reading a scholarly journal article, you should begin by reading the abstract. Almost all scholarly journal articles have abstracts; these are 100-200 word paragraphs at the beginning of the article that will introduce you to the topic, methods, and findings of the article. When you are doing your own research, the abstract will tell you if the article in question is likely to be useful for your project. When the article is assigned reading, the abstract is still worthwhile—it provides signposts for what you will find inside.
When you have completed reading a sociological journal article, you want to be able to answer a set of key questions about the content and findings of the article.

1) What is the topic of the article? If you were a librarian or a bookstore owner and you had to place this article on the shelf, how would you categorize it?
2) What is the research question and/or hypothesis? What does the author want to find out, and what does s/he expect to find? There may well be more than one research question or hypothesis—be sure to locate them all.
3) What have prior researchers said about these questions? How does the author propose to expand or improve on prior research?
4) What methodological strategies did the author use? There will often be a section called methods, so look at that. In addition, you should identify where the data came from. As you become more skilled in research methodology, you should take the time to consider whether you think the methodology and data used in the article was good, or whether there might have been better sampling strategies, data sources, measurement strategies, or methodologies for the project at hand.
5) What were the main findings of the research? What was the answer to each research question, and was each hypothesis confirmed or disconfirmed? Based on these findings, what sorts of arguments and conclusions does the author make?
6) What suggestions does the author make for future research? If you are looking for a research project, this is always a good place to turn for ideas!
7) What sorts of limitations or shortcomings do you find in the project? These might be methodological problems, ways in which you disagree with the author’s interpretation of the data and findings, areas in which the study could have been expanded, or any other issues. Sometimes the author will even identify some of these limitations her or himself.
8) What can you take away from this article? How is it connected to the research you are doing? How is it connected to the learning goals for the course you’ve read it in? Why have you read it? How does it contribute to an ongoing scholarly dialogue about a particular topic or issue. Of course, sometimes articles really are not that useful. However, in most cases you should be able to identify why the article matters and how it can be useful to you. In research methods courses, you should particularly focus on what the article can teach you about how to do research.
9) If you are reading this article as part of a research project, you should be sure to skim through the bibliography, keeping in mind what you read in the literature review. Are there any references that might be worth getting your hands on?

As you read the article, you should take notes on key elements of importance. I recommend that you avoid highlighting—the tendency when students highlight is to highlight almost everything, because it all seems important (or on the other hand to highlight nothing because the article is boring!). Instead, choose one of the strategies below:

• Take a separate sheet of paper or open a word processing document and keep your notes in that document. Aim to write about one typewritten page or two hand-written pages of notes for your typical 20-30 page journal article—the same goes for textbook chapters! In your notes, write a short summary of the article, any key insights the article suggested, ideas about how this article might be useful for your learning or research, and answers to the reading questions listed above.
• Invest in some sticky notes, preferably the kind you can write on and preferably in a variety of different colors. Flag key insights with sticky notes and use different colors to indicate different sorts of issues in the article. For instance, you might use yellow notes to mark facts and findings, blue notes to mark places where you were confused or want to know more, white notes to indicate main points and research methods, etc. Because you can write on the notes, you can indicate what drew your attention to this particular section, and you can also indicate which of the reading questions this section answers.
• If you must highlight: invest in a set of 5-6 different colored highlighters. Then, even if you have the tendency to over-highlight, you can still quickly find the material you are looking for. For instance, you might highlight the topic and research question in yellow, the methodological strategies and data sources in green, the findings in blue, connections to past or future research in purple, useful bibliographic sources in orange, and other things worth noting in pink. If you highlight, don’t forget about taking notes! You can write in the margin of the article to remind yourself why you highlighted something, to ask questions or grapple with the text, or to record insights that occurred to you while reading. In addition, you should write a short summary of the article and how it relates to your learning and/or research goals at the end of the article.
• If you are a more visual learner, you may want to consider making diagrams to help you organize your thoughts, such as venn diagrams, arrow diagrams of theoretical models, maps and timelines, or tables with different categories.

Finally, a time-saving tip: be sure to use your first time through to record a complete bibliographic citation to the article. Articles don’t always print out with all the bibliographic material on them, so use this time to find any part of the citation that’s missing. If you take notes on separate paper, include the bibliographic citation on that separate paper so you always have it if you lose track of the original article. If you write down any quotations or paraphrases, be sure to note the page numbers so you can include them in the in-text citations as necessary—this is a key step in avoiding plagiarism!