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Scipione Amati's History of the Kingdom of Woxu (1615), an example of a secondary source. In scholarship, a secondary source [1] [2] is a document or recording that relates or discusses information originally presented elsewhere. A secondary source contrasts with a primary, or original, source of the information being discussed. A primary ...
Secondary data refers to data that is collected by someone other than the primary user. [1] Common sources of secondary data for social science include censuses, information collected by government departments, organizational records and data that was originally collected for other research purposes. [2]
Many sources contain a combination of primary/secondary or secondary/tertiary material, sometimes all three. A source that is secondary in one context may be primary in another (e.g. a history book is a secondary source for the facts it reports, but a primary source for what the author wrote about an event).
For example, century-old love letters on display at a museum are primary sources; a secondary source might analyze the contents of these letters. The fact that the analysis is based on these letters would be evident from the description in the source, even if the paper contained no footnotes.
Example A secondary source conflicts with a primary source, where there is no way for the former to know better than the latter. A reliable map says that a village called Greenacre exists, rendered in all caps. A crime happens in that area and a news publication says it happened "Near the villages of Green and Acre".
Sources of information are commonly categorized as primary, secondary, or tertiary sources.In brief, a primary source is one close to the event with firsthand knowledge (for example, an eyewitness); a secondary source is at least one step removed (for example, a book about an event written by someone not involved in it); and a tertiary source is an encyclopaedia or textbook that provides a ...
Secondary sources are not necessarily independent sources. They rely on primary sources for their material, making analytic or evaluative claims about them. [f] For example, a review article that analyzes research papers in a field is a secondary source for the research. [g] Whether a source is primary or secondary depends on context. A book by ...
Sometimes, however, secondary sources act as filters and add "spin" to primary sources. Therefore, polemical or controversial secondary sources should be balanced with other secondary sources, and typically by reference to the unvarnished primary sources, so that the reader can have a basis to determine which secondary source provides the most ...