“Apps” for Sociology Research

We in the ASA Research and Development Department call your attention to Wiley Publishing’s free iPhone and iPad app, Sociology Spotlight, which allows users to view information about various sociology professional conferences, peer-reviewed journal abstracts, a sample of freely-available journal articles, and other material of interest. We invite our readers to discuss how they have used apps for mobile devices in their studies or research, including, for example, e-books. Students: to what extent have you used e-books in your coursework? Instructors, professors, researchers, and practitioners: to what extent have you assigned e-books in your courses or have you used information-gathering  smartphone apps?

ASA’s Bookstore offers a number of e-books, including a research brief published by the Research Department. ASA e-books are available to ASA members at a member price.

Looking for Data on Sociology?

Want to know how many bachelors degrees were awarded in sociology in 1990? Or maybe how sociology faculty salaries compare to political science? You can find this, and other data on sociology and social science degrees and enrollment, employment, funding, and sociology programs, as well as ASA membership on our Trend Data page. Links to similar datasets can be found on our Data Resources page.

Resources for Crimes Research

Author Ron Arons recently published Wanted! U.S. Criminal Records Sources & Research Methodology, a renference guide targeted for genealogists, criminologists, sociologists, historians, and even true crime writers searching for prison records, criminal court documents, parole records, pardon records, execution information, investigative files, and more. The book also contains examples of documents you can find in repositories and a primer on how to conduct genealogical research on criminals. For more information or to purchase this text, visit the author’s website at www.ronarons.com.

The Demand Side of Hiring: Attracting Faculty in Smaller Departments

Recently, a faculty member from a baccalaureate-only institution emailed our department:

“I think my department faces a dilemma common to non-research universities and colleges: hiring and retaining faculty with strong quantitative skills. Our experience seems to indicate that such colleges find it difficult to provide the resources necessary for quantitative researchers, and we seem to compete with research universities and for-profit and non-profit research organizations to hire and retain them. We can see the obvious that we are less able to provide grants and aid in grant-writing and to provide research assistants since we have no graduate students. But what resources might we offer a candidate as an attractive package?”

This inquiry inspired our latest research brief in the series of findings from the 2002 and 2008 surveys of sociology departments. In What’s Happening in Your Department? Department Resources and the Demand Side of Hiring, we compare the distribution of resources across type of institution (research, doctoral, masters, and baccalaureate) and examine its relationship to hiring, and with specific attention given to baccalaureate-only schools. These resources include the availability of various types of information technology (IT), travel funds, workplace and family policies, and course loads. Are departments with more resources more likely to hire new faculty? Click on the link to learn more.

We invite readers to join in this conversation. Share your experiences, comments, and questions.

Please note: do not include your name in the comment fields if you wish to remain anonymous.