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This wall painting found in the Roman city of Pompeii is an example of a primary source about people in Pompeii in Roman times (portrait of Terentius Neo).. In the study of history as an academic discipline, a primary source (also called an original source) is an artifact, document, diary, manuscript, autobiography, recording, or any other source of information that was created at the time ...
A primary source can have all of these qualities, and a secondary source may have none of them. Deciding whether primary, secondary or tertiary sources are appropriate on any given occasion is a matter of good editorial judgment and common sense, not merely mindless, knee-jerk reactions to classification of a source as "primary" or "secondary".
Primary data is data collected specifically for the research, such as through interviews or questionnaires. Secondary data is data that already exists, such as census data, which can be re-used for the research. It is good ethical research practice to use secondary data wherever possible. [44]
An older primary source that is seminal, replicated, and often-cited in reviews is notable in its own right and can be mentioned in the main text in a context established by reviews. Consider scope and focus: articles on broader topics and more mature fields should contain less primary research than articles on narrow, actively researched topics.
A primary source is one in which the authors directly participated in the research and documented their personal experiences. They examined the patients, injected the rats, ran the experiments, or supervised those who did. Many papers published in medical journals are primary sources for facts about the research and discoveries made.
This often makes them a worse source than the primary research and it is different to medical research where meta-analyses and systematic reviews are often superior to primary research. But these types of publications are often not possible in basic research since at the bottom of the research tree it does not make sense to repeat the analysis ...
These examples demonstrate why primary, secondary, and tertiary source definitions can be difficult for some editors to grasp, and a source for contention. While it is useful to grasp these distinctions, it is most important to just keep focused on using these sources in a manner which does not involve original research.
It is possible to create original research based on any source: primary, secondary or tertiary; and in all cases this should be avoided. However, particular care should be taken with primary sources because it is easy to misuse them. Most statements of fact or opinion come ultimately from primary sources, via analysis, interpretation or synthesis.