Sociological Abstracts is a library resource (which our library does not subscribe to) that abstracts and indexes the international literature in sociology and related disciplines in the social and behavioral sciences. This resource provides us with a classification scheme for sociological concepts. This classification scheme is represented below. It will help you think in terms of broader umbrella topics and narrower sub-topics. Go through this list, and imagine sub-topics that would fit under these broader umbrellas that you might be interested in. Once you start thinking about the broader topic areas that sociologists study, it will help you start to think of how that might relate to narrower topics you would want to study.
Here's an example from Prof. Fic's work when she was an undergrad Anthro/Soc major.
| Broad topic area: | group interactions |
| Sub-topic: | social group identity |
| My topic idea: | ethnic festivals as a way for "hyphenated" Americans to express their ethnic identity |
| My research question: | How do Hungarian-Americans use the annual Hungarian Festival held in New Brunswick, NJ to create and maintain their ethnic identity? |
| My hypothesis: | New Jersey's Hungarian-American community creates and maintains its Hungarian identity by consuming traditional ethnic foods, goods, and experiences at the annual Hungarian Festival held in New Brunswick each June. |
Encyclopedia of Sociology by 
21st Century Sociology by 
Encyclopedia of Social Problems by 
