CHAPTER 2

SOURCES OF HISTORY
 CATEGORIES OF HISTORICAL SOURCE
MATERIALS
• Documents – written or printed materials that have
been produced in one form or another sometime in
the past
• Numerical records – include any type of numerical
data in printed or handwritten form
• Oral statements – include any form of statement made
orally by someone
• Relics – any objects whose physical or visual
characteristics can provide some information about
the past
 CATEGORY OF HISTORICAL DATA
• Primary source – is one prepared by an
individual who was a participant in, or a direct
witness to, the event that is being described.
• Secondary source – is a document prepared
by an individual who was not a direct witness
to an event but who obtained his or her
description of the event from someone else.
 DISTINCTION OF PRIMARY, SECONDARY AND
TERTIARY SOURCES
• Primary sources – gives firsthand, original, and unfiltered information
– Eyewitness accounts
– Personal journals
– Interviews
– Surveys
– Experiments
– Historical documents
– artifacts
• Advantages and disadvantages of primary sources:
– Unavailable
– Too close to the subject
– Lacking a critical distance
– Time consuming to prepare, administer and analyze
 DISTINCTION OF PRIMARY, SECONDARY AND
TERTIARY SOURCES
• Secondary sources – filtered through someone else’s
perspective and may be biased
– Secondhand information
– Description of an event by someone other than an eyewitness
– A textbook author’s explanation of an event or theory
• Advantages and disadvantages of secondary sources:
– Provide a variety of expert perspective and insights
– Ensures the quality of sources such as scholarly articles
– More efficient than planning, conducting and analyzing certain
primary sources
– May have to dig to find applicable information
– May be colored by the writer’s own bias or faulty approach
DISTINCTION OF PRIMARY, SECONDARY AND
TERTIARY SOURCES
• Tertiary sources – provide third-hand information
by reporting ideas and details from secondary
sources
– Valuable potential for an additional layer of bias
• Advantages and disadvantages of tertiary sources:
– Offer a quick, easy introduction to the topic
– May point to high-quality primary and secondary
sources
– May oversimplify or otherwise distort a topic
– May miss new insights into a topic
 DIFFERENCES BETWEEN PRIMARY SOURCES
VS SECONDARY SOURCES
PRIMARY SOURCES
* CREATED AT THE TIME OF AN EVENT, OR
VERY SOON AFTER
* CREATED BY SOMEONE WHO SAW OR
HEARD AN EVENT THEMSELVES
* OFTEN ONE-OF-A-KIND OR RARE
* LETTERS, DIARIES, PHOTOS AND
NEWSPAPER (CAN ALL BE PRIMARY
SOURCES)
SECONDARY SOURCES
* CREATED AFTER THE EVENT
SOMETIMES A LONG TIME AFTER
SOMETHING HAPPENED
* OFTEN USES PRIMARY SOURCES AS
EXAMPLES
*EXPRESSES AN OPINION OR AN
ARGUMENT ABOUT A PAST EVENT
HISTORY
* TEXTBOOKS, HISTORICAL MOVIES AND
BIOGRAPHIES (CAN ALL BE SECONDARY
SOURCES)
 TYPES OF PRIMARY SOURCES
• Autobiographies and Memoirs
– Autobiography - an account of a person’s life written by that
person
– Memoir - a history or record composed from personal
observation and experience
• Diaries, Personal Letters, and Correspondence
– Diary - is a regularly kept record of the diarist’s activities and
reflections
– Personal Letter - an informal composition that usually
concerns personal matters
– Correspondence - a body of letters or communication
 TYPES OF PRIMARY SOURCES
• Interviews, Surveys, and Fieldwork
– Interview - a conversation where questions are asked
and answers are given.
– Survey - a list of questions aimed at extracting specific
data from a particular group of people
– Fieldwork - the collection of information outside a
laboratory, library or workplace setting
• Photgraphs and Posters
– it can illustrate past events as they happened and
people as they were at a particular time
 TYPES OF PRIMARY SOURCES
• Works of Art and Literature
– Paintings - a form of visual art where paint or ink is used on
a canvass or more often in the past, wooden panels or
plaster walls, to depict an artist’s rendering of a scene or
even of an abstract, non-representational image
– Drawing - a form of visual art in which a person uses various
drawing instruments to mark paper or another two-
dimensional medium
– Literature - a body of written works
• Speeches and Oral Histories
– Speech - a form of communication in spoken language
made by a speaker before an audience for a given purpose
 OTHER TYPES OF PRIMARY SOURCES
• Books
• magazine
• newspaper articles
• ads published at the time of the events
• artifacts of all kinds
– tools
– coins
– clothing
– furniture
 TYPES OF SECONDARY SOURCES
• Bibliographies
– Annotated bibliography - organized list of sources, each
of which is followed by a brief note or “annotation”
• Biographical works
– Biography - a description of a real person’s life including
factual details as well as stories from the person’s life.
• Periodicals
– Newspaper - a publication containing written
information daily about current events
– Magazine and Journal - published weekly, monthly,
quarterly, annually, or at some other interval
 TYPES OF SECONDARY SOURCES
• Literature reviews and review articles
– Literature review - an evaluative report of information
found in the literature related to the selected area of
study
– Review article - summarizes the current state of
understanding on a topic
– Film review - a popular way for critics to assess a film’s
overall quality and determine whether or not they think
the film is worth recommending
– Book review - is a form of literary criticism in which a book
is analyzed based on content, style, and merit
 TYPES OF TERTIARY SOURCES
• General references
– disctionaries
– encyclopedia
– almanacs
– atlases
• Crowd sources
– Wikipedia
– YouTube
– message boards
– Social media sites (Twitter, Facebook)
• Search sites
 REPOSITORIES OF PRIMARY SOURCES
• Libraries - collection of sources of information and similar resources,
made accesible to a defined community for reference or borrowing.
• Museums - an institution that cares for (conserves) a collection of
artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific
importance.
• Archives -an accumulation of historical records or the physical place
they are located.
• Historical societies - (sometimes also preservation society) an
organization dedicated to preserving, collecting, researching and
interpreting historical information or items.
• Special collections - are libraries or library units that house materials
requiring specialized security and user services
 DOCUMENT COLLECTION
• Found documents: Produced by Organizations
– Formal records: personnel, sales records,
shareholder reports, minutes of the meeting
– Informal communications: notes, memos, email
– Public records: electoral registers, registers of
births, marriages, and deaths
• Found documents: Produced by Individuals
– Personal Papers, diaries, logs, letters, phone texts,
emails
 DOCUMENT COLLECTION
• Found documents: Publications
– Academic literature
– Popular literature
– Guides, manuals
• Found documents: Secondary data
– Research data and field notes from previous
studies
– Publicly funded surveys
– Internal organizational research
 DOCUMENT COLLECTION
• Found documents: Multimedia
– Photos, videoa, comic strips, signposts, models
– Sound and music
– Electronic sources - screenshots, websites, online communities’
archives
• Researcher Generated documents
– Field notes
– Photographs
– Diagrams
– Storyboards
– Use of case scenarios
 EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL CRITICISM

• External Criticism – refers to genuineness of

the documents a researcher uses in a
historical study, has to do with the
authenticity of a document
• Internal Criticism – refers to the accuracy of
the contents of a document, has to do with
what the document says
 GENERAL PRINCIPLES FOR DETERMINING
RELIABILITY
• Relics or narratives
• Originality
• Closer a source
• Eyewitness
• Number of independent sources
• Tendency of a source
• Witness/source has no direct interest/ no bias
 CONTRADICTORY SOURCES
• If the sources all agree about an event, historians can
consider the event proved.
• However, majority does not rule; even if most sources relate
events in one way, that version will not prevail unless it
passes the test of critical textual analysis.
• The source whose account can be confirmed by reference to
outside authorities in some of its parts can be trusted in its
entirety if it is impossible similarly to confirm the entire text.
• When two sources disagree on a particular point, the
historian will prefer the source with most “authority” – that
is the source created by the expert or by the eyewitness.
 CONTRADICTORY SOURCES
• Eyewitnesses are in general, to be preferred especially
in circumstances where the ordinary observer could
have accurately reported what transpired and, more
specifically, when they deal with facts known by most
contemporaries.
• If two independently created sources agree on a
matter, the reliability of each is measurably enhanced.
• When two sources disagree and there is no other
means of evaluation, then historians take the source
which seems to accord best with common sense.
 EYEWITNESS EVIDENCE
• Is the real meaning of the statement different from its
literal meaning?
• How well could the author observe the thing he
reports?
• How did the author report? And what was his ability
to do so?
– Ability
– When
– Intention- for whom
– Additional clues
 EYEWITNESS EVIDENCE
• Do his statements seem inherently
improbable?
• Remember that some types of information are
easier to observe and report on than others.
• Are there inner contradictions in the
document?
 INDIRECT WITNESS
• People who were not present on the scene
but heard of the events from someone else.
• On whose primary testimony does the
secondary witness base his statements?
• Did the secondary witness accurately report
the primary testimony as a whole?
• If not, in what details did he accurately report
the primary testimony?
 ORAL TRADITION
• BROAD CONDITIONS
– Be supported by an unbroken series of witnesses
– Be several parallel and independent series of witnesses testifying to
the fact in question
• PARTICULAR CONDITIONS
– Report a public event of importance
– Be generally believed for a period of time
– Gone without protest
– Be one of relatively limited duration
– Critical spirit – sufficiently developed while tradition lasted, and the
necessary means of critical investigation must have been at hand
– Critical-minded persons –challenged the tradition – had they
considered
 SYNTHESIS: HISTORICAL REASONING
• ARGUMENT TO THE BEST EXPLANATION
– The statement, together with other statements already
held to be true, must imply yet another statements
describing present, observable data.
– Greater explanatory scope
– Greater explanatory power
– More plausible
– Less ad hoc
– Disconfirmed by fewer accepted beliefs
– Must exceed other incompatible hypotheses about the
same subject by so much, in characteristics 2 to 6, that
there is little chance of an incompatible hypothesis
GENERALIZATION IN HISTORICAL RESEARCH

• Researchers who conduct historical studies

should exercise caution in generalizing from
small or non-representative samples.
 QUIZ ON HISTORY AND HISTORICAL
RESEARCH
• Which of the following is not a characteristic of historical
research?
– A. it can be used to test hypotheses about relationships or trends.
– B. it facilitates prediction of the effects of policy
– C. it focuses primarily on past materials and events.
– D. it relies on naturalistic observation for valid data collection
• Which of the following is best classified as a source other than a
relic?
– A. a legal record
– B. a monument
– C. a piece of furniture
– D. an original painting
 QUIZ ON HISTORY AND HISTORICAL
RESEARCH
• The process that a researcher uses to verify that the contents
of a document are accurate is known as
– A. external criticism
– B. external validity
– C. internal criticism
– D. internal validity
• Which of the following is most likely to be a secondary source?
– A. a book about educational theory in the early 1900s
– B. a frontier family photograph
– C. a soldier’s letter home during the Korean War
– D. minutes from a university faculty meeting held in 1892
 QUIZ ON HISTORY AND HISTORICAL
RESEARCH
• If a researcher uses a tape of legend from a Tribal elder as a
source of data, he is using a data source known as a/n
– Document
– Oral statement
– Relic
– Secondary source
• Which of the following is not one of the four essential steps
in historical research?
– Defining the problem
– Interpreting information
– Oral statement
– Searching for relevant source material
 QUIZ ON HISTORY AND HISTORICAL
RESEARCH
• Which of the following is most likely to be a primary source?
– A. a film about battlefield maneuvers in the Civil War
– B. a miner’s letter home during the Gold Rush
– C. a poem expressing a miner’s feelings
– D. an article about educational theory in the early 1900s
• Which of the following is not a disadvantage of historical
research?
– A. it permits the investigation of topics and questions that can be
studied in no other way
– B. measures used in other methods to control for threats to internal
validity are not possible in a historical study
– C. sampling of information may be biased
– D. validity of information is very difficult to check
 QUIZ ON HISTORY AND HISTORICAL
RESEARCH
• Which of the following is not an advantage of historical research?
– A. can be used to test hypotheses
– B. can provide a richness of information
– C. permits the investigation of topics and questions that can be studied
in no other way
– D. the validity of information is questionable
• Most historical source material can be grouped into which four
basic categories?
– Museum pieces, documents, oral statements, and numerical records
– Relics, documents, oral statements, and numerical records
– Relics, letters from parents to children, oral statements, and numerical
records
– Relics, oral statements, museum pieces, and numerical records
 QUIZ ON HISTORY AND HISTORICAL
RESEARCH
• Census data is best described as which kind of historical
source material?
– A. document
– B. numerical record
– C. oral statement
– D. relic
• An interview with a World War II combat veteran is best
described as which kind of historical source material?
– A. document
– B. numerical record
– C. oral statement
– D. relic
 QUIZ ON HISTORY AND HISTORICAL
RESEARCH
• A letter from Winston Churchill to Mrs. Roosevelt is best
described as which kind of historical source material?
– A. document
– B. numerical record
– C. relic
– D. oral statement
• Which of the following questions does not apply to internal
criticism?
– A. Could the described event have taken place?
– B. Did the author have an axe to grind?
– C. Where was the document written?
– D. Would people behave as described?
 QUIZ ON HISTORY AND HISTORICAL
RESEARCH
• A researcher is studying a speech given by a
presidential candidate about education in the
Philippines. She is comparing what was said to
other information. She is engaged in
– A. a waste of time
– B. content analysis
– C. external criticism
– D. internal criticism
 QUIZ ON HISTORY AND HISTORICAL
RESEARCH
• TRUE/FALSE
– 1. A primary source is one prepared by an individual who was a
participant in, or a direct witness to, the event that is being
described.
– 2. A secondary source is a document prepared by an individual
who was not a direct witness to an event, but who obtained his
or her description of the event from someone else.
– 3. Content analysis is a primary method of data analysis in
historical research.
– 4. External criticism refers to the genuineness of the documents
a researcher uses in a historical study.
– 5. Internal criticism pertains to the accuracy or truthfulness of
information in a document.
 QUIZ ON HISTORY AND HISTORICAL
RESEARCH
• TRUE/FALSE
– 6. Most historical source material can be grouped into four
basic categories: documents, numerical records, oral
statements, and relics.
– 7. The advantage of historical research is that it follows a clear
sequence.
– 8. The only essential step involved in doing a historical study is
defining the problem or hypothesis to be investigated.
– 9. The unique characteristic of historical research is that it
focuses exclusively on the past.
– 10. When well designed and carefully executed, historical
research can lead to the confirmation of relational hypotheses.
 QUIZ ON HISTORY AND HISTORICAL
RESEARCH
• IDENTIFICATION
– 1. Refers to the genuineness of the documents a
researcher uses in a historical study.
– 2. Refers to the accuracy of the contents of a
document.
– 3. An institution that cares for (conserves) a collection
of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural,
historical or scientific importance.
– 4. A historical account or biography written from
personal knowledge or special sources.
– 5. A self-written account of the life of oneself.
 QUIZ ON HISTORY AND HISTORICAL
RESEARCH
• IDENTIFICATION
– 6. An index or textual consolidation of primary and
secondary sources.
– 7. A document or recording that relates or discusses
information originally presented elsewhere.
– 8. Information about events recorded at the time of
those events.
– 9. A collection of important records about a place or
an organization
– 10. A personal record of experience kept on a regular
basis.
 QUIZ ON HISTORY AND HISTORICAL
RESEARCH
• ESSAY
• 1. List the four categories of sources that
historical researchers use and give examples
for each.
• 2. What criteria do historical researchers use
to validate their sources of data?
• 3. Give an example of a hypothesis that a
historical researcher might test. (Fraenkel &
Wallen, n.d.)