Help With Modern History Sourcework (1 Viewer)

[Fruits Basket]

Hi!
We have to analyze two sources, primary and secondary etc....and I was wondering if, generally speaking, what would the teacher be looking for in terms of the following criteria (which is the same for both)

- Sophisticated examination of issues of reliability
- Sophisticated examination of issues of usefulness

 

[kaza_gal]

reliablility = whether what the source is reliable in what its saying eg. is a german source from 1940 going to be reliable in its evalutation of Britain etc.

usefullness = even if the source isnt reliable in its information, is it useful in the way that it portrays certain views or the bias within it eg. if there was a source like I described up there ^ its views would be useful as it shows a german view of Britain during the war period.

basically every source is useful as it shows us an opinion and an argument of a historical personality, but its the reliability which you have to analyse.
however all sources are biased in some way and this always effects the reliability.

hope thats what you were asking! and i hope it makes sense....

 

[the.fuzz]

yeah just to add to the person before me, to also look at the purpose of the source, which also affects the audience

e.g. a letter or diary entry from a soldier would reveal their deepest thoughts whereas a textbook would have unbiased info.

with reliability, if the source is old, then it could be unreliable. for instance, a quote today may have been altered through time, and may differ from the original quote.

 

[-may-cat-]

yeah just to add to the person before me, to also look at the purpose of the source, which also affects the audience

e.g. a letter or diary entry from a soldier would reveal their deepest thoughts whereas a textbook would have unbiased info.

with reliability, if the source is old, then it could be unreliable. for instance, a quote today may have been altered through time, and may differ from the original quote.

Hm, not really, remember people write textbooks, not machines and while good textbooks will remain impartial, many do not.

 

[cassie62442]

Sorry this might be too late, but just remember that when assessing reliability it's a good idea to compare the information given with other (reliable) sources. For example, if a source gives completely different facts and figures to another few sources that you consider reliable, it probably isn't very reliable.
Does that make sense??