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SOC244: Sociology of Death and Dying

Explore SOC244 Topic Suggestions

Suggested Topics: 

  1. Near Death Experiences
  2. Cremation
  3. Green Burials
  4. Stages and Challenges of Grief
  5. Teaching Children about Death
  6. Right to Die Movement
  7. Hospice and Palliative Care Movement
  8. The Funeral Industry
  9. History of Embalming
  10. History of Body Disposition
  11. Suicide
  12. Grief Support
  13. Issues of the "Afterlife"
  14. Body Farm
  15. How we Die?
  16. Religious Beliefs about Death and Dying
  17. Death Education
  18. Other Approved Topics (See Instructor)

Search Strategies:

  • Use Boolean Operators to connect search terms or keywords: AND, OR, NOT
  • Use quotation marks for exact phrases
  • Use database limiters to refine searches: full-text, peer-reviewed journals, published date, publication type, etc.

You need to complete a research paper requiring eight sources on a topic relating to death and dying. Where do you start? Let's explore a topic from the list on the left: Right to Die Movement.

A good place to begin your research is to gather background information in Credo Reference (see link below). A search for "right to die movement" in Credo Reference reveals encyclopedia articles (note: not a scholarly article). From the article "Right to Die," we can learn more about the movement and gather keywords for future article searches. For instance, from the Credo article we learn about the two competing views: the "sanctity of life" versus "quality of life." 

Now let's gather resources for the paper. An excellent source for sociology-related scholarly research articles is the Sociology Database in NCLIVE (see link below). From the background research, we can create a keyword search (an example): "Right to Die" and "Quality of Life". Please note the search strategies for the Sociology Database on the left.  

Once you click search, you have a list of search results. From here you can further limit your searches on the left-hand side of the search page. A good way to to list the most current articles is to limit your search results by publication date.

Now it's your turn to go through the search results to find the best articles for your research paper. Be sure to collect the citations for the articles in the tools section in NCLIVE.