Research Guides: Sociology: Home

Sociology and the University Libraries

Sociology is a department in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. With a dual focus on sociology and criminology, and overlapping with several other areas such as Women and Gender Studies, they are committed to "bettering human life for all."

Per their website,"The Department of Sociology at Virginia Tech is particular in its approach to developing and applying the sociological imagination....Our commitment to using data, theory, and discourse to improve the human experience requires us to engage with the world beyond the university. Through community engagement, experiential learning, and study abroad, we prepare our students to live and work as global citizens who possess the necessary tools and knowledge, as well as the humility, respect, empathy, and courage to change the world."

At Virginia Tech, Sociology investigates rules of group behavior, how they are created, and how they affect our behavior. Since all human behavior is social behavior, the subject matter ranges from two-person relationships up to global communities. The diverse course topics and social science background give you analytical skills that will help you see the world from entirely new perspectives. The Center for Peace Studies and Violence Prevention, a stand-alone research hub, exists under the broader sociology umbrella at Virginia Tech.

Criminology is the study of the origins, extent, causes, and effects of crime on societies. You'll learn the history and practice of crime control, as well as gain the research skills to draw larger conclusions about the nature and effects of crime.

While technically housed in the History Department, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies crosses with many other disciplines. This link to the WGSS guide allows those studying Sociology easy access, as an integral part of examining society. Africana Studies, housed in the Academy of Transdisciplinary Studies, another area that can combine with multiple disciplines, is linked here.

This guide provides a collection of recommended resources for this group of topics' research such as databases, journals, books, articles, and so on. The recommendations are not comprehensive, but these resources are very likely to contain materials useful for your projects.

Some online resources outside Virginia Tech

ANES: American National Election Studies
ANES is a collaboration of Duke University, University of Michigan, The University of Texas at Austin, and Stanford University, with funding by the National Science Foundation
Bureau of Justice Statistics
BJS is the primary statistical agency of the Department of Justice. The mission of BJS is to collect, analyze, publish, and disseminate information on crime, criminal offenders, victims of crime, and the operation of justice systems at all levels of government.
CalPoly Humboldt's Open Educational Resources: Sociology
Open Educational Resources (OER) are free online teaching and learning materials. They are videos, textbooks, quizzes, learning modules and more. This guide collects the best OER and organizes them by CPH department.
Cornell University Library Peace Studies guide to research centers
A collection of links to peace studies research centers from around the globe.
Digital Commons Network: Sociology
The Digital Commons Network brings together free, full-text scholarly articles from hundreds of universities and colleges worldwide. Curated by university librarians and their supporting institutions, the Network includes a growing collection of peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, dissertations, working papers, conference proceedings, and other original scholarly work.
European Social Survey
The European Social Survey (ESS) provides high-quality open access data measuring public attitudes, beliefs and behaviour.
FBI Crime Data Explorer
The FBI's Crime Data Explorer (CDE) aims to provide transparency, create easier access, and expand awareness of criminal, and noncriminal, law enforcement data sharing; improve accountability for law enforcement; and provide a foundation to help shape public policy in support of a safer nation. Use the CDE to discover data through visualizations, downloads in .csv format, and other large data files.
FBI Uniform Crime Reporting Program
A set links to various criminology-related data sets.
GSS: the General Social Survey
For five decades, the General Social Survey (GSS) has studied the growing complexity of American society. It is the only full-probability, personal-interview survey designed to monitor changes in both social characteristics and attitudes currently being conducted in the United States.
Immigration Research Initiative
Immigration Research Initiative is a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank on immigrant integration, looking at issues of economic, social, and cultural inclusion of immigrants in the United States. IRI is attentive to how immigrants fare in the United States and to how the receiving communities fare as they change, with particular attention to the implications for race, gender, and income equity.
Institute for Economics & Peace
IEP is an independent research institute based in Sydney, Australia, that creates and publishes free reports on peace, conflict, and economic development.
International Peace Institute
The International Peace Institute is an independent, non-profit organization working to strengthen inclusive multilateralism for a more peaceful and sustainable planet. Through its research, convening, and strategic advising, IPI provides innovative recommendations for the United Nations System, member states, regional organizations, civil society, and the private sector. With staff from around the world and a broad range of academic fields, IPI has offices facing United Nations headquarters in New York.
International Social Survey Programme
The ISSP is a cross-national collaboration programme conducting annual surveys on diverse topics relevant to social sciences. Established in 1984 by its founding members Australia, Germany, Great Britain and the US, the ISSP has since included members covering various cultures around the globe. Its institutional members, each of them representing one nation, consist of academic organizations, universities, or survey agencies. Since its foundation, over one million respondents have participated in the surveys of the ISSP. All collected data and documentation is available free of charge.
Library of Congress Sociology Research Guide
This sociology research guide provides an online bibliography of print books regarding the sociology of economics, health, inequality, politics, and religion, as well as urban and rural sociology. The links to subscription sociology databases offer onsite-only access to scholarly journal articles, reports, conference papers and proceedings, dissertations, theses, and working papers. This guide includes an overview of the Library's manuscript collections of the sociologists Seymour Martin Lipset, Lester Frank Ward, Robert Staughton Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd, and Amitai Etzioni.
Peace Research Institute Oslo
The Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) is a world-leading peace research organization. They conduct cutting-edge research on the conditions for peaceful relations between states, groups and people.
Pew Research Center
Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. They conduct public opinion polling, demographic research, content analysis and other data-driven social science research. They do not take policy positions.
SAMHSA Data
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration ollects data through multiple sources and surveys and provides access to public-use data files and documentation to support a better understanding of mental illness and substance use disorders in America.
The SocioWeb
An independent, long-running online guide to sociological resources on the web. It functions as a comprehensive directory of links to sociological research, articles, essays, theories, statistics, journals, professional associations, and university departments, among other resources.
United States Census Bureau
The Census Bureau is the federal government’s largest statistical agency. We are dedicated to providing current facts and figures about America’s people and economy. Federal law protects the confidentiality of all the information the Census Bureau collects. The Census Bureau's mission is to serve as the nation’s leading provider of quality data about its people and economy.
United States Institute of Peace
The United States Institute of Peace is a premier peacebuilding organization. Congress founded USIP in 1984 as an independent nonprofit corporation dedicated to promoting peace by preventing, mitigating and resolving violent conflict abroad.
U of WI Institute for Research on Poverty:Poverty FAQs
IRP is a nonpartisan research institution dedicated to producing and disseminating rigorous evidence to inform policies and programs to combat poverty, inequality, and their effects in the United States. We do this through the orchestration of a national research, training, and dissemination agenda (see our resources and events pages) grounded in extensive collaboration among researchers, policymakers, and practitioners.

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The FAQs page has links to a variety of recommendations for information on basic poverty trends and socioeconomic information in the USA.
US Bureau of Labor Statistics Time Use Survey
The American Time Use Survey (ATUS) measures the amount of time people spend doing various activities, such as paid work, childcare, volunteering, and socializing.