Research skills tutorial

You may need to find different types of resources depending upon what type of information you are looking for.

Sometimes you may need to find a basic overview of a topic to give you some background information, or you may require a first-hand account to give you a clear understanding of an event.

Primary, secondary and tertiary resources provide different types of information.

Primary Sources

Primary Sources of information are first hand accounts and may include:

• Letters, diaries and journals
• Printed materials written at the time of the event in question, including books, newspaper reports and newsletters
• Films and video, audio recordings, pictures, photographs
• Autobiographies, biographies and memoirs
• Census information, medical records
• Minutes and records of organisations, event programs
• Contracts, certificates and reports, including research reports
• Opinion polls and surveys
• Oral testimony - spoken accounts, speeches, interviews, tales, myths, ballads, songs, rhyming games etc.
• Artefacts [sic] or relics - can include physical sites, printed materials, tools and furniture etc.
• Web pages, e-mails, Usenet messages, bulletin board messages etc.

Burns, Robert 2000, Introduction to Research Methods, 4th edn, Pearson Education, French's Forest.

University of Maryland (2013) Primary, Secondary and Tertiary Sources, accessed 9 September 2013 from URL: http://www.lib.umd.edu/ues/guides/primary-sources

Secondary Sources

A secondary source utilises the primary information reported in another source and may include:

• Books, including textbooks, encyclopedias and quoted materials written about the topic.
• Journal articles and newspaper articles written about the topic.
• Any other source that reports what someone else has done or seen.

Cohen, Louis, Manion, Lawrence & Morrison, Keith 2000, Research Methods in Education 5th edn, Routledge, New York.

Tertiary sources

These provide an overview and distillation of primary and secondary resources. They include reference sources such as:

• Encyclopedias
• Textbooks
• Reviews
• Biographical sources
• Fact books
• Almanacs.

They can be used as a starting point.

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