Primary: first-hand or original
- Sciences: the paper reporting the original study and its data.
- History: letters, records, photographs, contemporary newspapers.
- Law: statutes, judgments, regulations.
- Business: annual reports, filings, interview transcripts you collected.
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Analyze my assignment — free →Secondary: interpreting the primary
Reviews, textbooks, meta-analyses and commentary. They are excellent for orientation and for finding primary sources, and weak as your only evidence for a specific claim.
The rule most rubrics apply
Use secondary sources to establish context and primary sources to support your central claims. If a key argument rests only on a textbook's summary of a study, trace it back and cite the study.
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