Types of Information Sources

Primary sources vs. Secondary Sources

Information can be divided into primary and secondary sources. The LSU Libraries User Instruction site defines these sources as follows:

A Primary Source of information is a firsthand or eyewitness account of an event. It is also raw data or facts which were gathered at an event. They are direct sources of information. Primary sources include diaries, letters, newspapers articles reported from an event, public documents, laws, court records, speeches, statistics, [interviews and] surveys, logs, [personal] journals, [scientific research articles], etc. A Primary Source of Information is actual evidence presented without any analysis or interpretation. (Part I, section 2)

A Secondary Source of information is something which comes after the fact. It is literature that analyzes, interprets, relates or evaluates a primary source or other primary sources. Textbooks, encyclopedias, dictionaries, any book or article which is an interpretation of events, or of primary sources are considered secondary sources. (Part I, section 3)

Statistics

Descriptive statistics describe some feature(s) of the participants involved in a study. For example, the statistical information generated from student evaluations of instruction available on-line (http://oira.tennessee.edu/sais/) are presented as descriptive statistics. This kind of statistical information generally takes the form of means (averages), percentages or frequencies. Simply put, descriptive statistics describe a population (in this case, the students enrolled in a particular course) but do not claim to represent the views of the entire population (all students enrolled at the University of Tennessee).

Inferential statistics differ from descriptive statistics in one very important aspect. When using this kind of statistic, we seek to take information from a sample (2,000 registered voters) of a population (125,000,000 registered voters) and make inferences or claims about those same features in the entire population. As we discussed about the information derived from descriptive statistics, it is essential that you make appropriate and ethical use of information derived from inferential statistics. In particular, use caution about making claims about a population from a sample of responses. Statistics must represent what they claim to measure and they must be from a reliable source.

Interviews and/or surveys

You may choose an expert in the field or someone who has had experience doing what your speech is about. Or, you may want to survey a group of people to gather more information. One advantage of using this method is that the information gathered from survey/interview respondents tends not to be available from any other source. However, a limitation of this method of gathering supporting material is that it can be a time-consuming, labor-intensive activity.

Scholarly sources vs. popular sources

Scholarly sources of information are generally the most credible sources of secondary information. The characteristics of scholarly sources as defined by Emory Libraries include:

• Report on primary research
• Written by experts in the field
• Written for other researchers/scholars
• Use terms and language that are discipline-specific
• Usually include in-text citations and a bibliography of cited sources
• May include graphs, charts, etc. related to the topic
• Often are peer reviewed by an editorial board or experts
• Published by a professional organization or society, university, research center, or scholarly press (Scholarly and popular sources, section 1)

A peer-reviewed source has been subject to a “blind” review by other experts in the field to determine if the manuscript is worthy of publication. Since the material is anonymously reviewed prior to acceptance for publication, peer-reviewed publications are believed to be the most reliable sources of information. Examples of scholarly, peer-reviewed journals include The New England Journal of Medicine, Human Communication Research, The Academy of Management Review, and The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Popular sources are written for a more general audience. Emory Libraries explains that popular sources contain the following characteristics:

• Contain general information that appeals to a wide audience.
• Written by journalists or others who are not professionals in that field.
• Use easily understood language.
• Citations and/or bibliography are usually NOT included.
• Limited or non-existent editorial review.
• May contain glossy photographs. (Scholarly and popular sources, section 3).

Periodicals that you may read regularly such as Time, Psychology Today or other newspapers/magazines are examples of popular sources. This does not mean that the information presented in these publications is necessarily inaccurate. Rather, you need to evaluate materials in terms of the level of confidence we assign to the publication.

Library databases vs. Web sources

The Web is a marvelous tool that can be used to explore most any topic. We can safely say that the introduction of the web in this information age has had a profound impact on how speakers research their topics. For this reason it is certainly possible for you to conduct your own web-based research. You can find primary sources of information, including “digitized special collections, government documents, statistics, and corporate annual reports” (Emory, Web versus library databases, section 1). When using the internet for research it is important to be aware of the following limitations:

• Anyone can put up a Web page!
• There is not an official body that oversees the organization, cataloging, and evaluating of sources found on a specific page.
• The Web is not particularly useful for finding secondary, scholarly sources because of copyright and publisher issues.
• Sites come and go.
• Search engines CAN’T FIND all the information that is freely available in the Web itself – some information is on the Invisible Web.
• The Web still does not have access to all the information that is available in the world. The vast majority of materials found in libraries and archives are not on the Web. (Emory, Web versus library databases, section 2)

Here are a few strategies for increasing the relevance of your Web searches.

• Advanced search options. When using the web for research, one action you can take to manage your search is to make use of advanced search options that are available on most search engines. These options will allow you to restrict the search to exact phrases, specific timeframes, specific domains (highly important strategy on the web), specific publications, or specific countries of origin.
• Authorship. You may use an article from a website only if the author’s name is available. If you can not find the author’s name you must have the sponsoring organization (Mayo Clinic, The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, etc.). If neither is present you may not use the website. It should be a red-flag that the site may not be credible.

With so much information available on the Web, why would you want to use the UT Libraries databases? Library databases provide information about books, book chapters, journal articles, magazines, newspapers, conference papers, government documents, etc. While most of the databases only give the citation for a resource, some also contain full-text access to the sources or contain links for information about full-text access to the sources. Keep in mind the following reasons to use library databases:

• To find scholarly articles and information not indexed or available in the Web
• To obtain specific citation information to help you track down information sources
• To save time in your research: instead of wading through thousands of web pages, a database provides one-stop shopping for information specific to your subject (Emory, Web versus library databases, section 4)

Explore these links for resources on:

• Types of Supporting Material
• Types of Information Sources
• Finding Information
• Selecting Information
• Citing Information
• Hodges Library Materials Location
• Suggested Databases
• More on Finding Books
• More on Finding Articles