After your Topic and Method Proposals have been approved, it’s time to collect information. Where to start?

You need to prioritize your sources, starting with the most relevant, promising, and reliable. Prioritizing by relevance means starting with the sources most likely to contain information on your topic. But it is also important to recognize different kinds and different qualities of sources. Sources can be classified into three categories: primary, secondary, and tertiary.

A. Primary sources are the raw material of social science and history. They are information produced by participants or eye-witnesses to the events you are studying; they include journalists’ reports, autobiographies, important speeches, census data and other government documents, private letters, diaries, and memoirs, and the oral accounts of survivors; photos and film footage shot on the spot (newsreels, documentaries, etc.) are also valuable primary sources.

You should definitely try to locate at least one primary source, to get a feel for what social scientists and historians do and to give your paper authenticity. But be critical and keep an open mind. Primary sources can be honest and factual, but they can also be biased and self-serving, or downright lies.

B. Secondary sources are those produced by experts on your topic who have studied and analyzed the primary sources. Scholarly books and articles are typical secondary sources, but so are some of the better films, such as "Patton," or "Schindler’s List," or "Amistad."

Secondary sources are not infallible either, for even experts have biases. However, there is a test of quality, namely the selection process that books and articles have to go through. Before a reputable publisher or journal will publish a book or an article, the editor will send it to several readers who will advise whether it should be published. Once it is published, librarians decide whether to buy the book. Finally, other scholars may or may not cite this book or article in their writings. So if you find a scholarly book or article in a good library, or if you see it cited favorably by a reputable scholar, then you can assume it is trustworthy.

C. Tertiary sources, such as textbooks and encyclopedias, are produced in a hurry by hack writers who have quickly read a few of the secondary sources and summarized them without checking or analyzing. DON’T USE TEXTBOOKS OR ENCYCLOPEDIAS!

Return to The Research Paper or go forward to Taking Notes