Because there are several categories of sources, the options you have to meet your information needs can seem complex. These descriptions and summaries of when to use what kind of source should help.

To Learn Background Information

When you first get a research assignment and perhaps for a considerable time afterward, you will almost always have to learn some background information as you develop your research question and explore how to answer it.

Sources from any category and from any subgroup within a category – except maybe journal articles – can meet students’ need to learn background information and understand a variety of perspectives. Journal articles are usually too specific to provide much background. From easy-to-understand to more complex sources, read and/or view those that advance your knowledge and understanding.

For instance, especially while you are getting started, secondary sources that synthesize an event or work of art and tertiary sources such as guidebooks can be a big help. Encyclopedias are a good tertiary source of background information.

Sources you use for background information don’t have to be sources that you cite in your final report, although some may be.

Sources to Learn Background Information

• Quantitative or Qualitative: Either—whatever advances your knowledge
• Fact or Opinion: Any—whatever advances your knowledge
• Scholarly, Professional, or Popular: Any—whatever advances your knowledge
• Primary, Secondary, or Tertiary: Any—whatever advances your knowledge
• Publication Format: Any—whatever advances your knowledge

One important reason for finding background information is to learn the language that professionals and scholars have used when writing about your research question. That language will help you later, particularly when you’re searching for sources to answer your research question.

To Answer Your Research Question

You must be much more selective with sources to meet this need because only certain choices can do the job. Whether you can use quantitative or qualitative data depends on what your research question itself calls for.

Only primary and secondary sources can be used to answer your research question and, in addition, those need to be professional and/or scholarly sources for most disciplines (humanities, social sciences, and sciences). But the arts often require popular sources as primary or secondary sources to answer research questions. Also, the author’s purpose for most disciplines should be to educate and inform or, for the arts, to entertain and perhaps even to sell.

As you may remember, primary sources are those created at the same time as an event you are researching or that offer something original, such as an original performance or a journal article reporting original research. Secondary sources analyze or otherwise react to secondary sources. Because of the information lifecycle, the latest secondary sources are often the best because their creators have had time for better analysis and more information to incorporate.

Sources to Answer Your Research Question

• Quantitative or Qualitative: Will be determined by the question itself.
• Fact or Opinion: Professional and scholarly for most disciplines; the arts often use popular, as well.
• Scholarly, Professional, or Popular: Professional and scholarly for most disciplines; the arts often use popular, as well.
• Primary, Secondary, or Tertiary: Primary and secondary.
• Publication Format: Those acceptable to your discipline.

To Describe the Situation

Choosing what kinds of sources you’ll need to meet this need is pretty simple—you should almost always use what’s going to be clear and compelling to your audience. Nonetheless, sources intended to educate and inform may play an out-sized role here.

But even then, they don’t always have to educate and inform formally, which opens the door to using sources such as fiction or the other arts and formats that you might not use with some other information needs.

Sources to Describe the Situation

• Quantitative or Qualitative: Whatever you think will make the description most clear and compelling and your question important to your audience.
• Fact or Opinion: Often to educate and inform, but sources don’t have to do that formally here, so they can also be to entertain or sell.
• Scholarly, Professional, or Popular: Whatever you think will make the description most clear and compelling and your question important to your audience.
• Primary, Secondary or Tertiary: Whatever you think will make the description most clear and compelling and your question important to your audience. Some disciplines will not accept tertiary for this need.
• Publication Format: Whatever you think will make the description most clear and compelling and your question important to your audience. Some disciplines will accept only particular formats, so check for your discipline.

To Report What Others Have Said

The choices here about kinds of sources are easy: just use the same or similar sources that you used to answer your research question that you also think will be the most convincing to your audience.

 Sources to Report What Others Have Said

• Quantitative or Qualitative: Those sources that you used to answer your research question that you think will be most convincing to your audience.
• Fact or Opinion: Those sources that you used to answer your research question that you think will be most convincing to your audience.
• Scholarly, Professional, or Popular: Those sources that you used to answer your research question that you think will be most convincing to your audience.
• Primary, Secondary, or Tertiary: Those sources that you used to answer your research question that you think will be most convincing to your audience.
• Publication Format: Those sources that you used to answer your research question that you think will be most convincing to your audience.

Continue Reading: 21.9 Ethical Use and Citing Sources