This guide will tell you about the kinds of research and generated information used in the field of Sociology, and also where to find Sociological information in the Whittemore Library, as well as what useful information can be found online. 

In our culture's dominant knowledge-gathering paradigm/process, a researcher's goal is always to share their work with their fellow scholars in their field by 'publishing' articles/papers that detail some specific research they observed or did, what happened, and what (if anything) they were able to conclude from it. Other social scientists learn from those who came before them, and some also go on to build upon that collected knowledge by doing further research in various areas.

• The vast majority of these articles are published in periodicals, known as 'scholarly/academic' journals
  • In these journals, peer review evaluation acts as a form of quality control during research article publication, performing a 'gate-keeper' function in Science.
• Sometimes an article describing research may be re-shared or re-written to function as one of a collection of chapters in an academic book (also known as a 'monograph') that offers detailed information about research being done in a particular topic.