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SSH4010: Social Science Honors Research Seminar

Introduction

Honors Research Seminar!

 

As you near the completion of your degree, you've built your research skills through other courses and should feel confident in tackling your Senior Seminar project.  

Hopefully you have had numerous opportunities to use the Library, have attended a class where a librarian showed you how to do Sociological research, and reached out to those same librarians for help when you've needed it.

Now is the time to use all of the skills you've built over the years and to use all of the resources at your disposal!

Because the different sections of Senior Seminar have different themes, this guide will provide you with an overview of the research techniques you'll need to find articles and resources for your literature review.  

If you get stuck or are having trouble finding useful information, feel free to contact me.

The Literature Review

Why Write a Literature Review?

A major part of your project will be collecting and integrating the research done by other scholars in support of your own hypotheses.

This review of the literature may begin as an annotated bibliography (a collection of potential articles with notes on how each relates to your research topic) and will often be the first step in writing the final Literature Review section of your research.

Conducting a literature review is an important part of any research project because it shows readers other, related research that has been done on the topic.  It can also be an important step in narrowing your topic and writing and informed paper.

In order to conduct a thorough literature review, you should look at a variety of resources rather than focusing on just one or two books or articles.  Many relevant and high quality sources can be found through the Library homepage (https://www.wpunj.edu/library).

This guide will walk you through the process of finding information through the Library website and may provide you with some specific resources to consult.

Feel free to contact me with any questions you have, or to set up a time to meet one-on-one for help with your research.

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