Goals
- Be able to recognize and distinguish primary and secondary sources of information
Which is which?
- Primary
- Original data directly from sources through methods like surveys, interviews, or experiments
- Secondary
- Analyzes and synthesizes existing data that has already been published by others
What will they look like?
- Primary
- In a journal or government report
- Will name hypothesis/theory, participants, results, and discussion
- Will be pretty focused
- Will likely have a citation after nearly every sentence of the introduction
- Secondary
- Typically an educational website or in an academic book
- Can include commentaries, summaries, or meta-analyses in journals
- An easier read on a broad topic
Primary or secondary?
- Which one?
- How do you know?