Examples of secondary sources (information from another source) include:
maps
textbooks
websites
emails/letters
official reports
newspapers
TV/digital streaming programmes
podcasts
Remember: keep a note of the source of your information such as the name of a textbook and author, or the URL address of websites used and the date they were accessed.
Usefulness and reliability of secondary sources
When assessing the usefulness and/or reliability of your secondary sources, you should consider where your information came from, and whether or not this makes it reliable and trustworthy. It might be appropriate to comment on the following:
qualifications and/or experience of the author(s)
bias the authors/publishers may have e.g. political prejudice
date of publication/information obtained from a website
balance of arguments and amount of evidence referred to in supporting these
This part of the Assignment Report is worth a maximum of six marks. For full marks, you must discuss in detail two research methods used to collect information about the topic.
You may use more than two different sources to collect information/data but do not waste time discussing all of your gathering techniques in your report as you could run out of time without finishing your write-up.
