Contact info

For Library research help, please contact Moninder Lalli, Librarian for Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies by email moninder_lalli@sfu.ca or Ask a librarian.

Research process

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.

Selected encyclopedias and handbooks

Use encyclopedias, dictionaries and handbooks to obtain definitions and overviews of a topic and also to identify key authors.

• Bloomsbury handbook of 21st-century feminist theory
• Encyclopedia of Big Data
  • Lorber K., Weiner A. (2017) Gender and Sexuality. In: Schintler L., McNeely C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Big Data. Springer, Cham. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.sfu.ca/10.1007/978-3-319-32001-4_100-1
• Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Feminism [2019]
• Routledge handbook of gender and environment

Find journal articles

How to find journal articles

Search for journal articles on your topic using the databases, below.  From within the database, use the "Get@SFU" link to find it or to initiate an inter-library loan request.

• Women's Studies International -- Start with this database and then search other databases.
• Academic Search Premier -- (multidisciplinary) covers many GSWS journals in full text.Limit your search results to "Academic" or "Scholarly" sources.
• CBCA Complete -- Canadian Business & Current Affairs (CBCA) Complete.  Limit your search results to "Academic" or "Scholarly" sources.
• Canada Commons (formerly, Canadian Electronic Library from desLibris) - for public policy documents from Canadian institutes, think-tanks and research groups.

Database for datasets

• SAGE Research Methods. Datasets

  Collection of teaching datasets and instructional guides covering a range of research methods. By picking a dataset and working through the accompanying guides, students can learn data analysis by practicing themselves.

Find books

The Library Catalogue provides access to books, journal articles, videos, government documents and much more.  To limit the search results to "books", use the filter (left-hand column in search results) to "resource type" of "books."

Library Catalogue search guide

Search the SFU Library Catalogue, either the Basic or the Advanced search

Note: In the searches below, you can limit search results to "Resource type" of "Books", "Subject", etc.

Basic Search:  data AND (femini* OR women OR gender OR social) AND (critical OR critique)

Advanced Search: Title contains "data" AND (critical OR critique*) AND feminis*

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.

Selected subject headings to find books

These selected Library of Congress Subject Headings will  assist you with finding books on research methods.  
Use the Browse Search option in the SFU Library Catalogue, then select "Subject" browse from the drop-down menu.

• Data mining
• Quantitative research -- Methodology
• Statistics -- Methodology
• Statistics for Social Sciences, Humanities, Law
• Webometrics

Selected books

These books will help you to get started. 

• Algorithms of Oppression : How Search Engines Reinforce Racism
• Big Data Agenda: Data Ethics and Critical Data Studies
• Compromised data : from social media to big data
• Damned lies and statistics untangling numbers from the media, politicians, and activists 
• Data collection : key debates and methods in social research
• Data feminism
• Data Game: Controversies in Social Science Statistics
• Data in society : challenging statistics in an age of globalisation
• Data journalism handbook : towards a critical data practice
• Data mining for the social sciences: an introduction
• Data Mining The Textbook
• Data Visualization in Society
• Decolonizing data : unsettling conversations about social research methods
• Dear science and other stories
• Invisible women : data bias in a world designed for men
• Metric society : on the quantification of the social
• Queer data : using gender, sex and sexuality data for action
• Writing up Quantitative Research in the Social and Behavioral Sciences

Government data portals

Open data portals across Canada (Government of Canada)
Not an exhaustive list. (If you don't see the area that you're looking for, use the search technique mentioned above.)

Statistics Canada

"Statistics Canada is the national statistical office. The agency ensures Canadians have the key information on Canada's economy, society and environment that they require to function effectively as citizens and decision makers."

• Data

Province of British Columbia

• DataBC

City of Surrey

• Open Data Catalogue

City of Vancouver

• Open Data Portal

Library guides

• Library Research Skills [interactive tutorial]
• What is plagiarism? [guide]
• Evaluating sources
• Referencing and citation management software For help, please contact us at citation-managers@sfu.ca 
• Tutorials
• Student Learning Commons & Writing help

Writing help

See the Student Learning Commons for expert and friendly help with academic writing, learning, and study strategies.