In order to analyze a primary source you need information about two things: the document itself, and the era from which it comes. You can base your information about the time period on the readings you do in class and on lectures. On your own you need to think about the document itself. The following questions may be helpful to you as you begin to analyze the sources:
primary source analysis essay structure
The structure for a primary source analysis will always follow the same pattern, so if you learn this, it will make your answers more coherent and save you time in an exam. Let me explain this structure to you. Firstly, as with all history essays, you must use the format of Introduction, Body and Conclusion. The main part you must then focus on is the body of the essay, and this is where the 5 W's come in: Who, What, Where, Why, When. These will form the body of your analysis and will be stuctured as follows:Who: Who wrote the source? What was their profession? Does it hold any bias towards the source?What: What is the source about? Are there any details missing?Where: Where was it written? Is it written at the place of the event or has the information been passed along?Why: Why was the source written? Who was the intended audience?When: When was the source written? Was it written at the time of the event?Following this structure is a foolproof way of ensuring no information is missed from your essay and that your provide a full, comprehensive analysis of the source. This will help to get your knowledge of the topic across and save thinking time in the exam, making you more efficient and prepared.
Secondary sources provide second-hand information and commentary from other researchers. Examples include journal articles, reviews, and academic books. Thus, secondary research describes, interprets, or synthesizes primary sources.
Table of contentsWhat is a primary source?
What is a secondary source?
Primary and secondary source examples
How to tell if a source is primary or secondary
Primary vs secondary sources: which is better?
Frequently asked questions about primary and secondary sources
If you are researching the past, you cannot directly access it yourself, so you need primary sources that were produced at the time by participants or witnesses (e.g. letters, photographs, newspapers).
If you are researching something current, your primary sources can either be qualitative or quantitative data that you collect yourself (e.g. through interviews, surveys, experiments) or sources produced by people directly involved in the topic (e.g. official documents or media texts).
A secondary source can become a primary source depending on your research question. If the person, context, or technique that produced the source is the main focus of your research, it becomes a primary source.
If you are researching the causes of World War II, a recent documentary about the war is a secondary source. But if you are researching the filmmaking techniques used in historical documentaries, the documentary is a primary source.
Most research uses both primary and secondary sources. They complement each other to help you build a convincing argument. Primary sources are more credible as evidence, but secondary sources show how your work relates to existing research. Tertiary sources are often used in the first, exploratory stage of research.
Secondary sources are good for gaining a full overview of your topic and understanding how other researchers have approached it. They often synthesize a large number of primary sources that would be difficult and time-consuming to gather by yourself. They allow you to:
When you conduct a literature review or meta analysis, you can consult secondary sources to gain a thorough overview of your topic. If you want to mention a paper or study that you find cited in a secondary source, seek out the original source and cite it directly.
Some types of source are nearly always primary: works of art and literature, raw statistical data, official documents and records, and personal communications (e.g. letters, interviews). If you use one of these in your research, it is probably a primary source.
In historical studies, old articles are used as primary sources that give direct evidence about the time period. In social and communication studies, articles are used as primary sources to analyze language and social relations (for example, by conducting content analysis or discourse analysis).
Special presentations, articles, and essays include examples that illustrate collection themes. Many collections include specific items, such as timelines, family trees or scholarly essays, which are not primary source documents. Such content has been created to enhance understanding of the collection.
Bringing young people into close contact with these unique, often profoundly personal, documents and objects can give them a sense of what it was like to be alive during a long-past era. Helping students analyze primary sources can also prompt curiosity and improve critical thinking and analysis skills.
Primary sources expose students to multiple perspectives on significant issues of the past and present. In analyzing primary sources, students move from concrete observations and facts to questioning and making inferences about the materials. Interacting with primary sources engages students in asking questions, evaluating information, making inferences, and developing reasoned explanations and interpretations of events and issues.
Primary sources help students relate in a personal way to events of the past and promote a deeper understanding of history as a series of human events. Because primary sources are incomplete snippets of history, each one represents a mystery that students can only explore further by finding new pieces of evidence.
Offer students opportunities to demonstrate their learning by writing an essay, delivering a speech taking a stand on an issue in the primary sources, or creating a museum display about a historical topic. For more follow-up activity ideas, take a look at the general or format-specific teacher's guides.
Note: The MLA Handbook: 8th Edition has changed from the structures of previous editions and now offers a new approach to citing various sources. The updated book turns its direction toward a more simplified and universal structure to encompass a variety of sources you may encounter. It encourages the logic that as long as your citation includes the core elements, it still aligns with proper MLA principles and provides the following generalized structure: MLA CITATION FORMAT (MLA Handbook, 8th ed., p. 20)
Articles and essays include examples that illustrate collection themes. Many collections include specific items, such as timelines, family trees or scholarly essays, which are not primary source documents. Such content has been created to enhance understanding of the collection. If no author is named, in most cases The Library of Congress may be cited as the author.
Students will learn to use interdisciplinary methods from the humanities and social sciences to probe the sources of the past for answers to present questions. They will learn to draw comparisons and connections among diverse societies across a range of historical eras. They will further learn to convey their findings through writing that is clearly structured, precise, and persuasive.
Secondary Sources are one step removed from primary sources, though they often quote or otherwise use primary sources. They can cover the same topic, but add a layer of interpretation and analysis. Secondary sources can include:
Document analysis is the first step in working with primary sources. Teach your students to think through primary source documents for contextual understanding and to extract information to make informed judgments.
Primary sources are the most important tools for research in any field. In the humanities, primary sources might include works of literature, journals or letters. Newspaper articles, journals and telegraphs might be primary sources for historical study. The sciences might look at original studies. Analyzing these sources can provide a starting point for one's own research, helping to situate it within a historical context, identify areas for needed research or to support a thesis.
Research the author and learn everything you can about his background and potential bias. Even if a primary source was not written with an agenda in mind, an author's upbringing, education, social status, religion and other biographical details can all influence the ideas being presented in the source. For example, knowing that an author was exceptionally wealthy may undermine the argument put forth in a treatise dismissing the plight of the poor. By learning everything you can about the author, you can identify potential biases.
Place the source in historical context. A letter that argues for the legalization of same-sex marriage may not be considered shocking if it was written in 2014. However, that same letter written in 1814 would be considered radical in almost any society. You must put the source in context of historical events and cultural mores. You should also identify any events that might have influenced the writing of the material, such as an essay written in response to economic changes after a war. You should also identify the influence that the source material had, if any. While a work may seem provocative, your research may show that there was no cultural response at the time of its publication.
Create a thesis statement for your analysis. Once you have all the information you can gather about your primary source, you must create a strong statement that unifies your analysis. For example, your thesis may be that the writing caused a great deal of social upset at the time it was published but that it failed to have any lasting historical value. Your thesis will be determined by your research.
Answer these questions about your source in the analysis. Be as thorough as you can be. You may not have arrived at a clear answer for all questions about your source, but you should be thorough in explaining what you did uncover. Don't just provide historical and biographical details. Provide context and interpret your results, showing what influence or importance the information has. 2ff7e9595c
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