A good anchoring article has five qualities:
- It has the same motivating research question as your project.
- It is not overly narrow in its focus. Literature reviews are a type of journal article that can definitely come in handy for this purpose.
- It is published in a peer-reviewed, scholarly journal in sociology or criminology. What is a peer-reviewed article, and how can you tell?
- It is neither too recent nor too old (published between 2000 and 2022 is ideal).
- You can access the full text of the article. Articles not available in full text from the library can be requested using interlibrary loan. Journal articles are sent to you electronically, typically within 1-2 business days, and the service is free for you to use. The first time you request an article, and once per year afterwards, you will need to set up/confirm your profile online.
Once you have found your anchor article, you will use it to limit the work on your topic that you consider.
