LibGuides: POLS 600: Senior Thesis: Research Databases

Resources for Research

Has research on your topic already been conducted? When investigating your topic, think about many different words that could describe what you're looking for. One source may use different words from another source to describe your topic.

Example: if you want to research the impact of NGO spending and the impact on democracy in developing countries, there are number of different key words you might use to find information and a number of different places you might be able to find this kind of information. If you successfully find articles about your topic it is important to examine the bibliography of those papers very carefully. Did they use a dataset? If so which one? Has the dataset been updated since the paper was published?

The Data & Indexes page will provide you a list of various collections of data that you might use for research.

JSTOR This link opens in a new window
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Online access to core scholarly journals in business, education, health, arts & humanities, life sciences, literature, physical sciences, and social sciences. Coverage begins with the first issue of each journal.
Terms of Use
Includes: Arts & Sciences 1-15, Business 2-4, & Life Sciences
HeinOnline: Government, Politics and Law This link opens in a new window
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HeinOnline’s Government, Politics & Law contains more than 100 million pages of content across 156,000 titles and 310,000 volumes. HeinOnline bridges the gap in history by providing comprehensive coverage from inception of more than 2,500 periodicals. In addition to its vast collection of journals, the database also contains the Congressional Record bound volumes in entirety, complete coverage of the U.S. Reports back to 1754, constitutions for every country in the world, classic books from the 18th & 19th centuries, all United States Treaties, the Federal Register and CFR from inception, and much more!

Terms of Use
Trial ends October 2018. Purchased in Nov 2018
Sociological Abstracts This link opens in a new window
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Provides access to literature in sociology & related disciplines, both theoretical and applied. Covering sociological topics in fields such as anthropology, economics, education, medicine, community development, philosophy, demography, political science, and social psychology. Coverage: 1974 to the present.
Terms of Use
Social Sciences Full Text This link opens in a new window
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Article citations and abstracts from over 600 periodicals and scholarly journals in all areas of the social sciences. Includes full-text access to some journals. Coverage of indexing: 1983-present; full-text: 1995-present. 99 simultaneous users.
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Project MUSE This link opens in a new window
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Full-text access to current content from high quality, peer-reviewed journals in the humanities and social sciences, including literature and criticism, history, visual and performing arts, cultural studies, education, political science, gender studies, and economics. Coverage varies.
Terms of Use
Google Scholar This link opens in a new window
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How to Use Google Scholar off-campus Provides access to scholarly sources across many disciplines including articles, theses, books, etc. from a variety of publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and other web sites. Links to full-text when available.
Scopus This link opens in a new window
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Scopus is the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature: scientific journals, books and conference proceedings. Terms of Use

Gale E-Books This link opens in a new window
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Collection of ebook reference works in all disciplines including The Encyclopedia of Political Science.
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
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Online access to core scholarly journals in business, education, health, arts & humanities, life sciences, literature, physical sciences, and social sciences. Coverage begins with the first issue of each journal.
Terms of Use
Includes: Arts & Sciences 1-15, Business 2-4, & Life Sciences
Historical Statistics of the United States (HSUS) This link opens in a new window
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Provides the numerical history of the United States and contains more than 37,000 annual time series of quantitative historical information covering virtually every quantifiable dimension of American history: population, work and welfare, economic structure and performance, governance, and international relations, all from the earliest times to the present. Each series is fully documented and placed in historical context by a recognized expert.
Terms of Use
U.S. Congressional Serial Set, 1817-1994 This link opens in a new window
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Readex offers reports, documents and journals of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, originally published in approximately 13,800 bound volumes from 1817-1994. Terms of Use
HeinOnline: Government, Politics and Law This link opens in a new window
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HeinOnline’s Government, Politics & Law contains more than 100 million pages of content across 156,000 titles and 310,000 volumes. HeinOnline bridges the gap in history by providing comprehensive coverage from inception of more than 2,500 periodicals. In addition to its vast collection of journals, the database also contains the Congressional Record bound volumes in entirety, complete coverage of the U.S. Reports back to 1754, constitutions for every country in the world, classic books from the 18th & 19th centuries, all United States Treaties, the Federal Register and CFR from inception, and much more!

Terms of Use
Trial ends October 2018. Purchased in Nov 2018
HathiTrust This link opens in a new window
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A growing partnership of over 70 libraries and research institutions, primarily university libraries, pooling their resources to create a digital library. The primary goals are long-term preservation of fragile collections, along with methods for making these records more readily accessible while still respecting in-copyright works. While WSU faculty, staff, and students can search across the entire digital library, they have full-text access to only the items in the Public Collections.
Terms of Use
Economist Historical Archive This link opens in a new window
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A complete facsimile edition of The Economist, the weekly paper which is essential reading for anyone engaged in politics, current affairs and all aspects of business and trade worldwide. In 8,000 issues and more than 600,000 pages, EHA offers full-colour images, multiple search indexes, topic and area supplements and surveys, together with a gallery of front covers and a selection of exportable financial tables.
Terms of Use

Search For Policy Reports from Think Tanks

Harvard Kennedy School Think Tank Search
The Harvard Kennedy School provides a customized Google search engine for searching hundreds of think tanks for policy reports.
Policy Archive
PolicyArchive is a comprehensive digital library of public policy research containing over 30,000 documents. It is maintained by the Center for Government Studies.
Annenberg Public Policy Center
A premier communication policy center, The Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania was founded in 1993 and created FactCheck.org in 2003. By conducting and disseminating research, staging conferences and hosting policy discussions, its scholars have addressed the role of communication in politics, science, adolescent behavior, child development, health care, suicide prevention, civics, and mental health, among other important areas.
The Brookings Institution
The Brookings Institution is a nonprofit public policy organization based in Washington, DC. Its mission is to conduct in-depth research that leads to new ideas for solving problems facing society at the local, national and global level.
Council on Foreign Relations
The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is an independent, nonpartisan membership organization, think tank, and publisher dedicated to being a resource for its members, government officials, business executives, journalists, educators and students, civic and religious leaders, and other interested citizens in order to help them better understand the world and the foreign policy choices facing the United States and other countries.

U.S. Cabinet Level Agencies

Finding information about policies will come from a variety of sources. Various departments within government (State, Immigration, Defense, etc) will have lots of information available about any number of policies. The information you are looking for might be in a different agency from where you would expect. In addition to the resources listed here, consider the sources listed on the Data & Indexes page of this guide, under the "Aggregate Data" tab.

Did you know, that the order of succession in line to the Presidency is Vice-President-Speaker of the House-President Pro-Tempore of the Senate and then the members of the cabinet as their departments were created?

Department of State
From the main page of the U.S. Department of State, go to “Countries & Areas” to view country profiles.
Department of Treasury
Department of Defense
Department of Justice
Department of the Interior
Department of Agriculture
Department of Commerce
Department of Labor
Department of Health & Human Services
Department of Housing
Department of Transportation
Department of Energy
Department of Education
Department of Veterans Affairs
Department of Homeland Security

HeinOnline: Government, Politics and Law This link opens in a new window
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HeinOnline’s Government, Politics & Law contains more than 100 million pages of content across 156,000 titles and 310,000 volumes. HeinOnline bridges the gap in history by providing comprehensive coverage from inception of more than 2,500 periodicals. In addition to its vast collection of journals, the database also contains the Congressional Record bound volumes in entirety, complete coverage of the U.S. Reports back to 1754, constitutions for every country in the world, classic books from the 18th & 19th centuries, all United States Treaties, the Federal Register and CFR from inception, and much more!

Terms of Use
Trial ends October 2018. Purchased in Nov 2018
Homeland Security Digital Library This link opens in a new window
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This database contains over 150,000 full-text documents on topics such as gangs, immigration, climate change, earthquakes, terrorism, pandemic influenza, school violence, etc. The public collection includes items such as U.S. policy and strategy documents related to homeland security, congressional hearings and legislation, Congressional Research Service (CRS) reports, Government Accountability Office (GAO) Reports, and other resources from federal government agencies. WSU students also have access to the full collection including reports, studies, videos, webcasts, and analyses.
Social Services Abstracts This link opens in a new window
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Indexes and abstracts articles from over 1,300 journals and other serial publications. Includes dissertations and book reviews. Focuses on social work, human services, social welfare, social policy, and community development. Coverage: 1979-present. Terms of Use

SAGE Research Methods This link opens in a new window
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A tool allowing researchers to explore methods concepts in over 175,000 pages of SAGE's book, journal and reference content. This can help with designing research projects, understanding particular methods or identifying a new methods, conducting research, and writing up findings. It can be used as a cross-disciplinary source across the social sciences, health sciences, and more.
Terms of Use
Works best in Chrome or Firefox.
SAGE Research Methods Cases This link opens in a new window
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A collection of case studies of real social research. They are designed to complement your theoretical understanding, at all levels, by exploring the difficulties, nuances and real-life decisions that researchers face. It is developed for use in class teaching or by students and researchers seeking applied understanding of research methods. Each case is equipped with learning outcomes and discussion questions.
Terms of Use
Works best in Chrome or Firefox.