Evaluating Sources

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A primary source is a firsthand account written by an eyewitness or a participant. It contains raw data and immediate impressions. A secondary source is an analysis of the information contained in one or more primary sources. For example, primary sources for a large fire caused by a gas leak would include the statements of victims and witnesses, the article written by a journalist who was at the scene, and the report of the fire chief in charge of putting out the blaze. If another journalist used the first journalist's article as background for a story on industrial accidents, or if a historian used any of these sources in a book on urban life in the twentieth century, these would be secondary sources.

For most research papers, you will need to use both primary and secondary sources. Secondary sources aren't necessarily less trustworthy just because they are not firsthand reports. Eyewitnesses can be prejudiced, self-serving, or simply unable to know as much as a later writer who has synthesized many eyewitness accounts. In writing a history paper on the attitudes of American social workers toward World War I, you might quote a primary source: Jane Addams, founder of Chicago's Hull House, who was a pacifist. If you relied only on Addams's words, though, you might get the idea that social workers were unanimously opposed to the war effort. To put Addams's views into perspective, you'd also need secondary sources, which would show that most of her peers did not want to identify with her unpopular pacifism and publicly disagreed with her.

If, however, you find yourself repeatedly citing a fact or authority as it is quoted in someone else's analysis, you might be wise to go to the primary source of the information itself. For example, statistics are often used by those arguing both sides of an issue — often it's only the interpretation that differs. You might find it useful to go back to the original research (the publication of which is a primary source) to learn where the facts end and the interpretation begins.