SOCL19071 State, Ethnicity and Gender
This guide is designed to help you find resources which will be useful for Assessment Item 1 (critical review of literature) and Assessment Item 2 (policy analysis).
For the first assessment, you are required to choose an issue and carry out a critical review of the literature related to policy issues in that area.
There are five issues to choose from; domestic violence, industrial relations legislation, youth suicide/depression, drug use, and border protection/refugees.
This guide is structured according to the different kinds of publications you must find for your review:
- One government publication
- One political party publication
- A minimum of five research publications/journal articles
- Two book chapters (from different books)
- Two newspaper articles or current affairs items
How to find government publications
To find out which government publications (e.g.) reports, policy documents) are held at CQU Library, perform a keyword search in the library catalogue.
To help limit your search to government publications, include
the words department and government as keywords.
Example:
This search will return all records containing the word
department or the word government, as well as the phrase
domestic violence.
(More information on how to perform a
keyword search and
phrase search.)
Some government publications will be freely available online.
There are a couple of ways to locate these publications:
1) You can go directly to a specific government department's website and browse to find a relevant publication. Check out Gov.au if you're not sure of the web address.
2) You can use a search engine, e.g.
Google,
and limit your search to government websites.
Example:
This search will limit your results to Australian
government websites, i.e. all sites ending with gov.au.
How to find political party publications
Generally, these kind of publications will not be held at CQU Library.
Political parties tend to have offices in most towns and cities - you could pick up a publication from your local office.
Alternatively, you could see if there is a suitable publication on the party website:
- Australian Democrats
- Australian Labor Party
- The Australian Greens
- The Liberal Party of Australia
- The Nationals
How to find journal articles
The core database for sociology is SocINDEX with Full-Text.
SocINDEX contains records for thousands resources, many of them journal articles. Some of these articles will be available in full-text via SocINDEX; some will be available through other databases or in hard copy on the Library's shelves.
The SocINDEX with Full-Text: Search Guide will show you how to perform a search in SocINDEX.
The Australian Public Affairs Information Service (APAIS) is another database which you may find useful for this course.
APAIS is a citation-only database. When you find an article you're interested in, you will need to click on the "ArticleLinker" icon beside the citation to see if the full-text is available through another database or in hard copy on the Library's shelves. (See Using ArticleLinker to locate full text articles.)
How to find book chapters
You can use the Book Search in the Library catalogue to find books on your topic.
Example:
This search will return all records containing the phrase domestic violence,
the word policy, and the word australia.
You may also like to try searching
SocINDEX with Full-Text for relevant
book chapters. SocINDEX provides full-text access to over 720 books online.
The SocINDEX with Full-Text: Search Guide will show you how to perform a search in SocINDEX.
To limit your search to books available in full-text via SocINDEX, tick the box beside "Full Text" and select "Books" underneath "Publication Type" on the initial search screen.
Example:
How to find newspaper articles or current affairs items
NewsBank provides full-text access to major Australian newspapers, as well as a selection of international newspapers.
All of the records in NewsBank will contain a link to the full-text resource.
Here are some directions for how to access and search NewsBank:
- Log-in to
NewsBank
- You will be taken to the initial screen in NewsBank. Click on
"Major
Australian Newspapers".
- You will be taken to a search screen - this is where you can enter in your keywords and apply any date limits:
Example:
This search will
return all records containing the phrase domestic violence and the word
policy
which were published in the past 3 months.
- Click on the "Search" button.
- This will return a list of results. To access a full text article, click on the title of the article in the results list:
Example:
