SA 200W OL01: Power Conflict and Change in Canadian Society

Research help

This guide will provide assistance with finding scholarly material to support the research paper assignment.  For Library research help, please contact Moninder Lalli, Librarian for Sociology / Anthropology by email (moninder_lalli@sfu.ca) or Ask a librarian.

This guide was previously (prior to Sept 2022) published as SA 100.

Services for Distance Education students

Consult the guide Services for Distance Education students if you are off campus.

Essay  

Start Your Research Here - This page gives you an overview of the research process, or in other words how to find materials for your essay.

Sample research question

Formulate a question, such as: What is the effect of the Anti-terrorism Act and how is it used for national security?

Brainstorm about your question. E. g. Ask questions such as:

  • Why was it introduced?
  • When did it come into effect?
  • How has it been applied by the police or Canada's Border Agency? 
  • What is the effect on people?
  • Has any particular group been the focus or target or has there been racial profiling?
  • Has it affected people's rights?

Create a "Concept Map"

Identify key concepts and create a "Concept Map" (Concept Map Worksheet). 

This will assist you with combining keywords in a logical manner.    

 

Concept 1Concept 2Concept 3Concept 4Concept 5
anti-terror*actcanad*islamichuman right*
Related TermsRelated TermsRelated TermsRelated TermsRelated Terms
border securitylaw or laws or regulationsfederal*racial profil*civil rights
national securitylegislat*provinc*"people of color"deten* or detain*
public safetypolicy or policies   

Selected encyclopedias and handbooks

Get an overview of a topic by using encyclopedias, handbooks or textbook.  These types of resources identify key authors, theories and  important resources on a topic. 

Tip:  Check out the Further Reading lists at the end of each encyclopedia entry for citations to key works on that topic!

For more, try, "Background information - Anthropology" and "Background information - Sociology"

Find books in the Library

Catalogue search will find books, journal articles, videos, government reports and more.  After doing a search, you can limit your search results by "Resource type" of "Books."  

Library Catalogue search guide

Search the SFU Library Catalogue

   You can also use  SFU Library Catalogue: Advanced Search

Search for books by a specific author

Use Catalogue Search: Advanced keyword

Any Field: Author    Contains: Marx, Karl    Resource type: Books

Search for books on a topic

Research question:

"What is the effect of the Anti-terrorism Act and how is it used for national security"

(anti-terror* OR national security OR border security) AND (law OR legislat* OR regulat*) AND (race OR racial OR islam*) AND canad*

    Limit search results (left-hand column) by "Resource type" of "books", and by "Subjects" (Canada, Canada. Human Rights Act)

More examples:

Combine different concepts using AND
Combine same concepts using OR
Use quotation marks to search for a phrase
Use brackets for synonyms
Use asterisk (*) for different endings of words

Note:  For Catalogue Search, when combining concepts, use CAPITAL letters ( "OR", "AND")

Look at the titles in the "results list" and for those books that look relevant, click on their subject headings to find more books on that topic.

 

Browse by subject

Browse by Subject    (change the default "title" to "subject").  Browse by Subject will only result in books, not book chapters or journal articles.

Find journal articles

Search within the databases below for scholarly articles.  

How to find journal articles tutorial. 

What is a scholarly (or peer-reviewed) journal?

If the full-text of the article is not available within the database then use the "Get@SFU" link to find it or to initiate an inter-library loan request.

Sociology and Anthropology databases

Tip: Limit search results to "scholarly", "academic", "peer-reviewed" articles.  You may also want to "sort" to view the "newest first"

  • ProQuest Sociology Collection - for issues related to class, gender, racism, sexuality and sexism and theoretical and applied sociology, social science, and policy science. For information of immigrants, racism, society, structural barriers, migration, and refugees
  • Anthropology Plus -- key anthropology journals
  • Social Sciences Full Text  - indexes social science journals.
  • AnthroSource  Full-text access to journals produced by the American Anthropological Association
  • Social Theory - documents from prominent social sciences theorists.

Canadian topics

  • CBCA Complete  - scholarly and popular journal articles for Canadian topics.  Limit the results to "scholarly."
  • Canada Commons (formerly, Canadian Electronic Library from desLibris) - for public policy documents from Canadian institutes, think-tanks and research groups.
  • Canadian Newsstream - covers the major Canadian daily newspapers.
  • Canadian Research Index - Canadian government publications.

Other databases

More Sociology Databases, Anthropology Databases

Selected journals

Both of the "annual review" journals (below) are useful to find literature reviews of anthropological and sociological topics.

Statistics

Statistics Canada is the major statistical agency for Canada but useful statistics can also be found on individual federal, provincial and municipal government department sites.

Citing Government documents, Canadian - APA style | MLA style | Chicago style

Useful websites

Below are some useful websites. 

Search tips for Google and Google Scholar

Search tips and techniques

  • Use "or" to combine same concept
  • Use "and" to combine different concepts
  • Use "quotation marks" to search for an exact phrase
  • Use asterisk (*) the truncation symbol, for variation on endings of words (work* will find: work, works, worker, working, workforce, etc.)
  • For Abbreviations, also use full names: ILO or "international labour organization"
  • Search Tips for Google and Google Scholar
     
    • Use intitle: to force Google to find those words in the titles of results.  Use quotation marks ("") to search for phrases
      • intitle:"airport security"
         
    • Use filetype: to tell Google to find certain filetypes
      • filetype:pdf
         
    • Use site: to specify results from a government web site
      • "Airport security”  site:gov

Library guides

Writing help

For undergraduate students, the Student Learning Commons provides assistance and numerous, helpful guides.

Selected resources on writing essays: