Study Guides: Social &amp; Political Science: Home

Welcome

This guide is for students enrolled in Social and Political Sciences. It will help you develop the core skills needed to find, evaluate, and reference information in your assessments.

In this guide you will:

Find key resources for Social and Political Sciences
Plan a search to find information
Understand how to evaluate different sources
Find referencing resources

Key resources for Social and Political Sciences

Core databases

Academic Search Complete (EBSCO) Good multidisciplinary scholarly journal database with extensive amount of information.
Communication Source (EBSCO) Offers publications worldwide pertaining to communication, linguistics, rhetoric and discourse, speech-language pathology, media studies and related fields. Back file coverage includes top titles in communication reaching deep into the 20th century.
Informit Complete wide range of databases and full content publications that deliver the majority of Australasian scholarly research to the education, research and business sectors.
ProQuest Central Covers current and international content in over 160 subject areas such as: business and economics; medical and health; news and world affairs; science; education; technology; humanities; social sciences; psychology; literature; law; and, women's studies.
JSTOR Includes interior design, fashion and textile design, visual communication, architecture, animation, history, public communication, journalism, media, social inquiry, writing.

News databases

Factiva Australian and International newspapers and business & trade publications.
Informit EduTV Find films that have been shown on free-to-air TV & Australian television content
Newsbank Contains international, national, regional, and local news from across Australia and the world. Complete full-text content of local and regional news.
Trove (National Library of Australia) Collection from the National Library of Australia.
TVNews Australian TV news, current affairs and selected documentaries from the free-to-air networks with links to the digitised video content.

Handbooks and dictionaries

Dictionary of the social sciences Provides concise and clear definitions of terms used in the social sciences

Resource types

Books

Useful for providing an overview of a topic or issue. Contains background information and context and is very useful as a starting point for research - especially if you are new to a topic!

Journal Articles

Contains the latest research on very specific topics and often contains in-depth analysis. Journal articles are published more quickly than books so can be used to find more up to date information.

News

Includes broadcasts, editorials and newspaper articles. News sources are a useful source of information for recent or current events or issues, as they and published very quickly (often daily). News sources also provide different perspectives on issues and events.

Reports

Often contain specific information about a particular issue, event, industry area, region, trend or market. Most reports are written by or for governments, organisation or industry areas.

Social & Political Science: Home