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GOVTH 2305 Assignment | Term Research Paper (Ross): Research

GOVTH 2305 | Prof. Jennifer Ross (Fall 2022)

Types of Sources to Seek: What's What

Primary sources are original data -- documentation of an event itself, so to speak, rather than interpretation of it. In history, this means letters or diaries and so on. In science, this would be reports of empirical research. In government, the text of laws and statutes are primary sources.

We use these because: they're the originals. Whatever we're looking at, this is straight from the horse's mouth.
Limits for this type: Not placed into a context.

  • Laws, statutes, regulations
  • Official statistics
  • Research reports (reporting original experiments conducted by the authors)
  • Speeches
  • Autobiographies, oral histories
  • News stories IF they're reporting eyewitness accounts

A secondary source is a layer removed from the primary source. The historian reads several diaries and writes an article about an event based on the different points of view. A political scientist or a journalist writes out the implications of a statute.

We use these because: (generally) they contextualize the primary sources, or they provide incredibly current information (i.e. news articles).
Limits for this type: Variety of viewpoints at play in interpreting and applying the primary sources. Authors may be trying to interpret subjects they aren't well-versed in.

  • News articles
  • Statistics
  • Magazine articles
  • Books

Scholarly sources are a very specific type of source, and "scholarly" means more than just good or credible. These are sources that have been written by experts in a field: actual experts, with advanced degrees in the topic they're discussing. They have often (but not always) been through a peer-review process before publication, in which other experts of the topic critique the piece looking for bad information or wrong conclusions or badly-constructed experiments.

We use these because: they present strong analysis, giving meaning and context and showing connections. The authors have the strongest level of knowledge about the topic.
Limits for this type: Slower to publish, so not as current.

  • Journal articles
  • Scholarly books (look for University Press publishers, expert authors, copious in-text citations)

Don't apply...

  • Tertiary Sources: another level removed from secondary, these include things like reviews, encyclopedia and dictionary entries, almanacs. These can be helpful at the start, but it's pretty typical that none of these would be considered good enough (or necessary) to be directly used in your final paper when you're writing at a college level.
  • Juvenile Sources: Pay attention to the way a page is styled -- are there cartoony figures? Read the url -- is there a __/kids/__ in there, or a __/grades3-8/__ perhaps? Does a book have a subject tag of "juvenile nonfiction"? Unless you're writing about how information can be best presented to minors...avoid using these.

Finding...

Library Databases

Once you've completed some preliminary research, you're ready to start digging in to find more scholarly sources. Depending on exactly what you're focusing on, you could end up exploring databases relating to business, health, education, and so on.

​Pro-Tip!While the databases all function in more or less the same way, the way they pull out scholarly articles can vary. Look for any search options that specifically say "peer-reviewed/scholarly articles" to limit your results.

Even More Databases:

Consider which disciplines apply to your specific topic when choosing your databases.

DatabasesResearch Databases (Main Page)

Databases (Searchable List)

Google Scholar

Google Scholar is sort of like Google's version of our research databases in that it indexes scholarly content, making it easier to pick out than if you did just a normal Google Search. However, you're less likely to have direct access to these otherwise expensive resources.

Google Scholar Search  
 

ResearchGate

Sample article on Research Gate with the "request full-text" button highlightedYou can discover articles here (and it'll come up in Google searches, too) but this also streamlines the process for requesting an article we might not have access to -- assuming the author is active on the site.

Scholarly articles end up behind the paywalls of their publishers, but the authors are allowed to share copies out to people who ask for them. When or if the author is paying attention to the request may be a bit of a gamble, however... but it's worth a shot.

Of course, if you really want to be enterprising, you could also email an author directly if you can find their current institution! Same deal -- you can't be sure if they'll see and respond to your request on the timeline you need, but nothing ventured, nothing gained.

News Databases

E-Books

Websites

Strategies for Locating Primary Sources

Hey, this tab is really sparse! How come?

In your librarian's experience, it's often easier to focus on finding secondary sources first, then "backtrack" to find primary. Sure, you don't only want to look at your primary sources under the influence of what someone else has already said about them... but it's very hard to know what your options are for primary sources for a given topic without any of that secondary insight. Besides, if you're doing it right, you're not saying the exact same argument as your secondary sources are, and thus you'll be scrutinizing your primary sources in a different way, too.

 

Backtracking

Let's say you're researching government policy supporting entrepreneurs, and you read a news story about business owners fretting over a new tax law. That news story is likely secondary (and is credible but not scholarly). But aha, there's a new tax law: noted!

  • Does that article name it specifically? If so, it should be easier to look up the statute's original text.
  • If not, you've got another round of searching for e.g. "new tax law 2020" or "2020 business tax."

You're just looking for leads to get you, ultimately, to the law itself, probably by way of a secondary name-drop of its official title. Doesn't matter how you get there, really.

 

Databases: Empirical Research

Spotting a research report: sections tend to include abstract and introduction, methods (including particpants, procedure, instruments), results, and discussion.In the library databases (see Scholarly Articles tab), there are reports from studies. If the authors have conducted new info-gathering and new analysis of that data, those articles are most likely primary sources, as well.

  • Did they take existing data and do a new analysis? Useful, but not primary.
  • Did they only use other articles as their sources? It's a lit review. Useful, but not primary.

There is no filter for these, but you can look for the word "study" in the title or abstract (summary) to help pick these out. (You can also search for "study" as a Title keyword, but understand that this will exclude a lot, as they don't all mention that word in their titles.) The articles themselves may also have specifically-named sections.