A-manual-for-writers-of-research-papers-theses-and-dissertations

Depending on your experience, readers will expect you to use different levels of sources,called primary, secondary, and tertiary (think first-, second-, and thirdhand). These aren'tsharply defined categories, but they roughly characterize how researchers think about mostsources.3.1.1 Consult Primary Sources for EvidenceIn fields such as literary studies, the arts, and history, primary sources are original works—diaries, letters, manuscripts, images, films, film scripts, recordings, and musical scores createdby writers, artists, composers, and so on. Those sources provide data—the words, images, andsounds that you use as evidence to support your reasons. Data can also be objects: coins,clothing, tools, and other artifacts from the period or belonging to a person you're studying.In fields such as economics, psychology, chemistry, and so on, researchers typically collectdata through observation and experiment. In others, researchers gather evidence throughinterviews. (To conduct effective interviews, you must use reliable methods for eliciting andrecording the information you collect.) In such fields, evidence consists of the data thatresearchers collect. The primary sources for those collected data are the publications that firstpublish them, ranging from government and commercial databases to scholarly journals.Experienced researchers look for data in primary sources first. If, for example, you werewriting on Alamo stories, you'd try to find sources written at the time—letters, diaries,eyewitness reports, and so on.3.1.2 Read Secondary Sources to Learn from Other ResearchersSecondary sources are books and articles that analyze primary sources, usually written by andfor other researchers. A report in a scholarly journal analyzing Alamo stories would be asecondary source for researchers working on those stories. Secondary sources also includespecialized encyclopedias and dictionaries that offer essays written by scholars in a field. Youuse secondary sources for three purposes:1. To Keep Up with Current Research. Researchers read secondary sources to keep up withthe work of other researchers, to inform and refine their thinking, and to motivate theirown work by adding to a published line of research.2. To Find Other Points of View. A research report is not complete until the researcheracknowledges and responds to the views of others and to his readers' predictable questionsand disagreements (see 5.4.3). You can find most of those other points of view insecondary sources. What alternatives to your ideas do they offer? What evidence do theycite that you must acknowledge? Some new researchers think they weaken their case ifthey mention any view opposing their own. The truth is the opposite. When youacknowledge competing views, you show readers that you not only know those views butcan confidently respond to them (for more on this, see 5.4.3).More important, you must use those competing views to improve your own. You can't