Sociology 131: Marriage & Intimate Relationships

For this paper, you need to select and summarize a peer-reviewed, original research article about your social issue. It must be empirical and original research.

Empirical articles are reports of research based on observation or experience conducted by the expert, student, professor, or researcher. Empirical articles may include lab experiments, interviews, or surveys. They are often published in peer-reviewed, scholarly or academic journals.

Empirical articles usually (but not always!) have these sections:

• Abstract or Summary of article
• Introduction
• Literature Review
• Materials & Methods or Methodology
• Results or Data Analysis
• Discussion or Conclusion
• References or Works Cited

To identify an empirical article, you can also look for phrases like "we tested", "in our study, we measured", "study" or "participants".

Adapted from LMU Parts of an Article LibGuide, CSMD LibGuide, 

The following databases focus on marriage, family, and interpersonal relationships and have empirical articles. To access the database, click on the title. For off campus access, use your Canvas login. Once inside the database, use the TIP below to find empirical articles.