Source Analysis
Source Analysis is a crucial aspect of your study of History. Source analysis is your ability to consider a number of elements of a source and come to a conclusion about the reliability and usefulness of the source. While there are many ways of doing source analysis, one that I find easy to remember and quite helpful is outlined in the following attachment. You should download this and save it in your Modern History file.
Source Analysis OMCPAPRU sheet | |
File Size: | 160 kb |
File Type: |
Source Analysis
Origin – Who? Where? When?
Motive – Why have they said this? What potential bias might exist?
Content – What have they said? Does this stack up to what you know of events? Can you detect Bias in the language?
Limitation – What are the limits of this source? What does it not tell us? What is it limited to giving us evidence for?
Audience – To whom was it sent? How might this impact what is said?
Perspective – What point of view might this person be coming from? Are they a learned secondary scholar with years of research behind them writing 200 years after the events with little bias – or a soldier on the front line with little knowledge and much bias due to the pain they are suffering?
Having considered all this – then you can answer the following:
Reliability – Is this a reliable piece of information about the events it portrays? Why or why not?
Usefulness – What is this source useful for? (Remember all sources are useful for something) Ask yourself: What can a historian learn from this source. Remember that a source does not need to be reliable to still be useful.
Origin – Who? Where? When?
Motive – Why have they said this? What potential bias might exist?
Content – What have they said? Does this stack up to what you know of events? Can you detect Bias in the language?
Limitation – What are the limits of this source? What does it not tell us? What is it limited to giving us evidence for?
Audience – To whom was it sent? How might this impact what is said?
Perspective – What point of view might this person be coming from? Are they a learned secondary scholar with years of research behind them writing 200 years after the events with little bias – or a soldier on the front line with little knowledge and much bias due to the pain they are suffering?
Having considered all this – then you can answer the following:
Reliability – Is this a reliable piece of information about the events it portrays? Why or why not?
Usefulness – What is this source useful for? (Remember all sources are useful for something) Ask yourself: What can a historian learn from this source. Remember that a source does not need to be reliable to still be useful.
Simple Source Analysis Example | |
File Size: | 363 kb |
File Type: |