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KNPE 167: Socio-Cultural Dimensions of Sport and Physical Activity

Journal Articles

Journal articles are important sources for your research as they contain the most-up-to-date research in a given field and often focus on a particular aspect of a topic. There are different types of articles: scholarly, popular or trade. If you are looking for scholarly or peer reviewed articles, you can typically restrict your search results to only peer reviewed journal articles by applying a search limit in the database.

To locate articles on your topic, use Omni or use an index or a database such as the ones recommended on this guide. 

Key Indexes and Databases

Sociological Abstracts

Premiere database for finding sociological research. Abstracts and indexes the international literature in sociology and related disciplines in the social and behavioral sciences.

SportDiscus

SPORTDiscus database covers key areas of sports including sports physiology, sports psychology, sports studies, physical education, fitness, health, and recreation. 

Sports Medicine & Education Index 

This index contains scholarly and popular literature on a wide variety of content including sport sociology/psychology, sports medicine, dance, kinesiology, recreation, fitness, sports equipment, marketing, coaching, and training.

Multidisciplinary Databases

Academic Search Complete

Find articles in peer-reviewed journals, conference proceedings, monographs and reports covering a broad spectrum of topics.

Canadian Business & Current Affairs (CBCA)
Multidisciplinary database indexing Canadian magazines, scholarly journals, and news.

IBSS: International Bibliography of the Social Sciences

Provides international coverage and indexes journal articles, books, reviews and selected chapters.

Google Scholar

Use the Google search engine to locate articles from a wide variety of academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities, as well as scholarly articles published on the "open" web.

Types of Articles

Indexes and databases contain a variety of types of articles including popular (magazine) and academic or scholarly or peer-reviewed (journals). It is important to know the difference so that the sources you use for your assignments are scholarly, not popular. 

Scholarly journals are also referred to as "academic," "peer-reviewed," or "refereed" journals. One-way researchers try to ensure the legitimacy of their work is to have it peer reviewed prior to publication. A peer-reviewed or refereed journal is one in which manuscripts submitted by authors are reviewed by experts on the topic before being accepted for publication in the journal. 

For more information, please refer to: Distinguishing Scholarly Journals from Other Periodicals