Just like primary sources, secondary sources must be cited correctly to avoid plagiarism. The rules for a correct citation vary depending on the style guide you use, usually APA, MLA, or Chicago. Primary sources (such as interviews, letters, and artwork) are often considered the most credible sources of information, but secondary sources are also important. Textbooks, encyclopedias, and documentaries are useful secondary sources that help researchers formulate their own arguments and ideas on a topic. In science, a secondary source is usually an analysis of original research or a book review. In fields such as history, secondary sources are usually peer-reviewed articles and books. Secondary sources are works that simply analyze, interpret or describe historical or scientific events. They are written on the basis of first-hand accounts without themselves being first-hand accounts. Secondary sources draw on data and experience from primary sources to reassess information and draw conclusions by combining it with information from other sources. I`m just trying to familiarize myself with primary and secondary sources, especially for the type of essay I need to write. I look at the analysis of an album and I talk about the different musical techniques it contains. To do this, I need to do some research and find articles/videos, etc. related to these techniques, as well as music history, etc.
If you are conducting a literature review, you can consult secondary sources to get a complete overview of your topic. If you want to mention an article or study that you find cited in a secondary source, find the original source and cite it directly. One of the main advantages of using secondary sources for research is that they are readily available. It is much easier to borrow or buy a book on Roman architecture than to fly to Italy and see Roman ruins! Finally, there`s a lot to be said for where to find your secondary sources. School libraries are generally effective at filtering out untrusted sources, compared to, say, a random website on page seven of your search results. If you ever have any doubts, check the documents cited in a source`s bibliography. Secondary sources provide second-hand information and comments from other researchers. Examples include journal articles, reviews, and academic books. A secondary source describes, interprets or synthesizes primary sources.
A primary source is anything that gives you direct evidence about the people, events, or phenomena you are studying. Primary sources are usually the main focus of your analysis. When searching, a secondary source is an article or book that deals with information that was first presented elsewhere. A biography of Alexander Hamilton is an example of a secondary source. Think about what you need to understand your topic and fully support your arguments. Ask yourself the following questions to find out which secondary sources you need: contains information that matches other secondary sources You are writing an essay on the history of the American flu pandemic. They use newspaper articles and diaries from 1918 to understand what it was. They draw conclusions from these primary sources about what it was. The most common examples of secondary sources are books that collect information from various primary sources, including textbooks. Other common examples of secondary sources include biographies (but not autobiographies), art reviews, theses and dissertations, reports that collect data from other studies, and non-personal essays. If your goal is to analyze the government`s economic policy, a newspaper article on a new policy is a secondary source.
But if your goal is to analyze media coverage of economic issues, the newspaper article is a primary source. In history, ancient articles are used as primary sources that give direct clues about the period. In social and communication sciences, articles are used as primary sources for the analysis of language and social relations (for example, through content analysis or discourse analysis). While primary sources are more reliable and authoritative, secondary sources are equally important to the scientific and educational communities. Not everyone has access to primary sources, and even if they do, they may not be able to understand them (for example, if the source is written in a dead language or contains recordings). Secondary sources present key information from the primary source in a way that is both easier to understand and able to mass produce to reach more people. Primary sources are generally defined as “original research papers written by the scientists who actually conducted the study.” An example of primary source material is the Purpose, Methods, Results, Conclusions sections of a research paper (MARD style) in a scientific journal by the authors who conducted the study. [15] In some areas, a secondary source may include a summary of the literature in the introduction to a scientific article, a description of what is known about a disease or treatment in a chapter of a reference work, or a synthesis written to review the available literature.
[15] A review of previous work in this area in a peer-reviewed primary source is secondary source information.