The International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences (2001), edited by Neil J. Smelser and
Paul B. Baltes, is a 26-volume work. It has some 4,000 signed articles, commissioned by around 50 subject editors, and includes 150 biographical entries, 122,400 entries, and an extensive
hierarchical subject index. It is also available in online editions. The work has been described in Contemporary Psychology as "the largest corpus of knowledge about the social

Social sciences

Social science is the field of study concerned with society. "Social science" is commonly used as an umbrella term to refer to a plurality of fields outside of the natural sciences usually exclusive of the administrative or managerial sciences...

 and behavioral sciences in existence."

Subject Classification

Contents include the following broad Subject Classification.

Overarching Topics: Institutions and infrastructure, History of the social sciences

History of the social sciences

The history of the social sciences has origin in the common stock of Western philosophy and shares various precursors, but began most intentionally in the early 19th century with the positivist philosophy of science...

 and the behavioral sciences, Ethics of research and applications, Biographies, Integrative concepts and issues

Methodology: Statistics

Statistics

Statistics is the study of the collection, organization, analysis, and interpretation of data. It deals with all aspects of this, including the planning of data collection in terms of the design of surveys and experiments....

, Mathematics

Mathematics

Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...

 and computer science

Computer science

Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...

s, Logic of inquiry

Inquiry

An inquiry is any process that has the aim of augmenting knowledge, resolving doubt, or solving a problem. A theory of inquiry is an account of the various types of inquiry and a treatment of the ways that each type of inquiry achieves its aim.-Deduction:...

 and research design

Research design

Research designs are concerned with turning the research question into a testing project. The best design depends on your research questions. Every design has its positive and negative sides...

.

Disciplines: Anthropology

Anthropology

Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...

, Demography

Demography

Demography is the statistical study of human population. It can be a very general science that can be applied to any kind of dynamic human population, that is, one that changes over time or space...

, Economics

Economics

Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...

, Education

Education

Education in its broadest, general sense is the means through which the aims and habits of a group of people lives on from one generation to the next. Generally, it occurs through any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts...

, History

History

History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...

, Linguistics

Linguistics

Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....

. Philosophy

Philosophy

Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...

, Political science

Political science

Political Science is a social science discipline concerned with the study of the state, government and politics. Aristotle defined it as the study of the state. It deals extensively with the theory and practice of politics, and the analysis of political systems and political behavior...

, Clinical psychology

Clinical psychology

Clinical psychology is an integration of science, theory and clinical knowledge for the purpose of understanding, preventing, and relieving psychologically-based distress or dysfunction and to promote subjective well-being and personal development...

 and applied psychology

Applied psychology

The basic premise of applied psychology is the use of psychological principles and theories to overcome problems in other areas, such as mental health, business management, education, health, product design, ergonomics, and law...

, Cognitive psychology

Cognitive psychology

Cognitive psychology is a subdiscipline of psychology exploring internal mental processes.It is the study of how people perceive, remember, think, speak, and solve problems.Cognitive psychology differs from previous psychological approaches in two key ways....

 and cognitive science

Cognitive science

Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary scientific study of mind and its processes. It examines what cognition is, what it does and how it works. It includes research on how information is processed , represented, and transformed in behaviour, nervous system or machine...

, Developmental psychology

Developmental psychology

Developmental psychology, also known as human development, is the scientific study of systematic psychological changes, emotional changes, and perception changes that occur in human beings over the course of their life span. Originally concerned with infants and children, the field has expanded to...

, social psychology

Social psychology

Social psychology is the scientific study of how people's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others. By this definition, scientific refers to the empirical method of investigation. The terms thoughts, feelings, and behaviors include all...

, personality psychology

Personality psychology

Personality psychology is a branch of psychology that studies personality and individual differences. Its areas of focus include:* Constructing a coherent picture of the individual and his or her major psychological processes...

 and motivational psychology, Sociology

Sociology

Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...

Intersecting Fields: Evolutionary sciences, Genetics

Genetics

Genetics , a discipline of biology, is the science of genes, heredity, and variation in living organisms....

, behavior

Behavior

Behavior or behaviour refers to the actions and mannerisms made by organisms, systems, or artificial entities in conjunction with its environment, which includes the other systems or organisms around as well as the physical environment...

 and society

Society

A society, or a human society, is a group of people related to each other through persistent relations, or a large social grouping sharing the same geographical or virtual territory, subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations...

, Behavioral neuroscience

Behavioral neuroscience

Behavioral neuroscience, also known as biological psychology, biopsychology, or psychobiology is the application of the principles of biology , to the study of physiological, genetic, and developmental mechanisms of behavior in human and non-human animals...

 and cognitive neuroscience

Cognitive neuroscience

Cognitive neuroscience is an academic field concerned with the scientific study of biological substrates underlying cognition, with a specific focus on the neural substrates of mental processes. It addresses the questions of how psychological/cognitive functions are produced by the brain...

, Psychiatry

Psychiatry

Psychiatry is the medical specialty devoted to the study and treatment of mental disorders. These mental disorders include various affective, behavioural, cognitive and perceptual abnormalities...

, Health

Health

Health is the level of functional or metabolic efficiency of a living being. In humans, it is the general condition of a person's mind, body and spirit, usually meaning to be free from illness, injury or pain...

, Gender studies

Gender studies

Gender studies is a field of interdisciplinary study which analyses race, ethnicity, sexuality and location.Gender study has many different forms. One view exposed by the philosopher Simone de Beauvoir said: "One is not born a woman, one becomes one"...

, Religious studies

Religious studies

Religious studies is the academic field of multi-disciplinary, secular study of religious beliefs, behaviors, and institutions. It describes, compares, interprets, and explains religion, emphasizing systematic, historically based, and cross-cultural perspectives.While theology attempts to...

, Expressive forms, Environmental science

Environmental science

Environmental science is an interdisciplinary academic field that integrates physical and biological sciences, to the study of the environment, and the solution of environmental problems...

s/ecological sciences, Science and technology studies

Science and technology studies

Science, technology and society is the study of how social, political, and cultural values affect scientific research and technological innovation, and how these, in turn, affect society, politics and culture...

, Area studies

Area studies

Area studies are interdisciplinary fields of research and scholarship pertaining to particular geographical, national/federal, or cultural regions. The term exists primarily as a general description for what are, in the practice of scholarship, many heterogeneous fields of research, encompassing...

 and international studies

International studies

International Studies generally refers to the specific University Degrees and courses which are concerned with the study of ‘the major political, economic, social, cultural and sacral issues that dominate the international agenda’...

Applications: Organizational studies

Organizational studies

Organizational studies, sometimes known as organizational science, encompass the systematic study and careful application of knowledge about how people act within organizations...

 and management studies, Media studies

Media studies

Media studies is an academic discipline and field of study that deals with the content, history and effects of various media; in particular, the 'mass media'. Media studies may draw on traditions from both the social sciences and the humanities, but mostly from its core disciplines of mass...

 and commercial applications, Urban studies and Urban planning

Urban planning

Urban planning incorporates areas such as economics, design, ecology, sociology, geography, law, political science, and statistics to guide and ensure the orderly development of settlements and communities....

, Public policy

Public policy

Public policy as government action is generally the principled guide to action taken by the administrative or executive branches of the state with regard to a class of issues in a manner consistent with law and institutional customs. In general, the foundation is the pertinent national and...

, Modern cultural concerns

Subclassification of articles with an example

The above Subject Classification is alphabetized with a link for each such general subject at: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/referenceworks/9780080430768#ancpt0645. Each such link leads to subclassification links for that subject. The hierarchical classification of articles for a subject can be used to locate an article. For example, the Economics link above brings up these subclassification links:

Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics

Financial Economics

General Methods and Schools

Industrial Organization and Law and Economics

International Economics, Growth, and Development

Labor Economics

Public and Welfare Economics

Each such subclassification link goes to corresponding Encyclopedia article titles with the author, page numbers, and links to the article Abstract and a View of Related Articles. (The latter is an extensive list of references separate from the Bibliography in the article.) For example, under the Economics link above, the link for "General Methods and Schools" brings up:

Auctions, Pages 917-923, S. Müller | Abstract | View Related Articles

Behavioral Economics, Pages 1094-1100, S. Mullainathan and R. H. Thaler ...

Consumer Economics, Pages 2669-2674, A. P. Barten

Econometric Software, Pages 4058-4065, W. H. Greene

Econometrics, History of, Pages 4065-4069, M. S. Morgan and D. Qin

Economic Education, Pages 4078-4084, W. E. Becker

Economics and Ethics, Pages 4146-4152, J. Broome

Economics, History of, Pages 4152-4158, M. Schabas

Economics, Philosophy of, Pages 4159-4165, D. M. Hausman

Economics: Overview, Pages 4158-4159, O. Ashenfelter

Expectations, Economics of, Pages 5060-5067, G. W. Evans and S. Honkapohja

Experimental Economics, Pages 5100-5108, V. L. Smith

Feminist Economics, Pages 5451-5457, D. Meulders

Firm Behavior, Pages 5676-5681, F. M. Scherer

Game Theory: Noncooperative Games, Pages 5873-5880, E. van Damme

Information, Economics of, Pages 7480-7486, S. S. Lippman and J. J. McCall

Institutional Economic Thought, Pages 7543-7550, G. M. Hodgson

Macroeconomic Data, Pages 9111-9117, T. P. Hill

Market Areas, Pages 9203-9207, J.-C. Thill

Marxian Economic Thought, Pages 9286-9292, R. Bellofiore

Monetary Policy, Pages 9976-9984, B. M. Friedman

Political Economy, History of, Pages 11649-11653, K. Tribe

Post-Keynesian Thought, Pages 11849-11856, G. C. Harcourt

Psychiatric Care, Economics of, Pages 12267-12272, S. Tyutyulkova and S. S. Sharfstein

Psychology and Economics, Pages 12390-12396, K. Fiedler and M. Wänke

Science, Economics of, Pages 13664-13668, W. E. Steinmueller

Search, Economics of, Pages 13760-13768, C. A. Pissarides

Transaction Costs and Property Rights, Pages 15840-15845, O. E. Williamson

The Abstract (summary)

Abstract (summary)

An abstract is a brief summary of a research article, thesis, review, conference proceeding or any in-depth analysis of a particular subject or discipline, and is often used to help the reader quickly ascertain the paper's purpose. When used, an abstract always appears at the beginning of a...

 for each article can be linked from the article link. An example of an Abstract link is that for the article "Economics: Overview" above.

See also

• List of encyclopedias by branch of knowledge
• International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences
  International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences
  The International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences was first published in 1968. Edited by David L. Sills and Robert K. Merton.-See also:*List of encyclopedias by branch of knowledge*International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences...
  
   (1968)
• The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics (1987)
• The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, 2nd Edition
  The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, 2nd Edition
  The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics , 2nd Edition, is an eight-volume reference work, edited by Steven N. Durlauf and Lawrence E. Blume. It contains 5.8 million words and spans 7,680 pages with 1,872 articles. Included are 1057 new articles and, from earlier, 80 essays that are designated as...
  
  (2008)