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Medical sociology

Journal articles and periodical literature

Finding articles

Locating a specific journal

If you're looking for an article for which you have the journal title, try looking up the journal title directly in our Find Journals guide.


Article databases and indexes

For an overview of searching for articles, see our Find articles guide.

Because of the interdisciplinary nature of medical sociology, databases containing both medical literature and sociological literature are relevant.

Some of the core databases for sociology literature are:

Sociological Abstracts

Contains citations to international literature of sociology and related disciplines in the social and behavioral sciences. Provides abstracts of journal articles and citations to book reviews drawn from thousands of serials publications and also provides abstracts of books, book chapters, dissertations, conference papers and working papers. Includes coverage of sociology of health and medicine.

SocINDEX with Full Text

Database of sociology articles with very comprehensive coverage. Records have subject headings from a sociological thesaurus designed by subject experts. Includes more than 475 full-text titles and provides information on all areas of sociology, including social behavior, human tendencies, interaction, relationships, community development, culture, and social structure.

Social Sciences Full Text

Provides access to a wide assortment of the most important English-language journals published in the social sciences. This resource provides detailed indexing for over 625 periodicals dating back as far as 1983--nearly 400 of which are peer-reviewed.

See also the Sociology subject guide for further resources.

 

Some of the core databases for biomedical literature are:

MEDLINE

Premier bibliographic index of journal articles in medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, and the pre-clinical sciences. Updated daily. (Note: The National Library of Medicine's free article index PubMed contains all the citations in MEDLINE plus other material. See What's the difference between MEDLINE and PubMed for more information.)

EMBASE

A major database for biomedical and pharmaceutical research that includes over 3,500 international journals on public health, drug dependence and abuse, psychiatry, toxicology, and drug research.

See also the Medicine subject guide for further resources.

 

Other specialized databases of interest might include:

Global Health

Specialized database of literature on public health from an international perspective. Includes information on sociology of health topics, as well as international health, biomedical life sciences, environmental health, disease, nutrition, food safety and hygiene, and health policy.

Recent Dissertations in the Medical Humanities

Index to recent dissertations in medical humanities topics, updated monthly by the University of Pittsburgh. Full text not available through the website -- to get the full text (when available), use the database ProQuest Dissertations and Theses. Topics include: AIDS (Social and Historical Contexts)
Alternative Medicine (Social and Historical Contexts), Disabilities Studies, Public Health/International Health, Religion and Medicine, Substance Abuse, and Women's Health and History

ASSIA (Applied Social Sciences Index and Abstracts)

Applied social science and health information database. Covers health, social services, psychology, sociology, economics, politics, race relations and education. Updated monthly.

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