Primary/secondary source comparaison

[Referos]

Hi, my research question for my internal assessment is this:

"To what extent does John Scopes, in hs reflections on his own trial, accurately interpret the impact and importance of the Scopes “Monkey” Trial?"

So, basically, I am going to compare Scopes's view on the importance of his trial (a primary source) with a historian's interpretation of the impact of the trial (secondary source). My question is: is this even a good idea? I mean, Scope's reflection contains a lot of analysis and thus feel more like a secondary source than a primary one. But the problem is that, as a secondary source, his reflections are worthless because he's not a historian! Frankly, I think that comparing a witness's view with a historian's view is a lot more interesting than just choosing two books with opposing interpretations but I fear that it might not be appropriate.

Help?

[sweetnsimple786]

I mean, Scope's reflection contains a lot of analysis and thus feel more like a secondary source than a primary one. But the problem is that, as a secondary source, his reflections are worthless because he's not a historian! Frankly, I think that comparing a witness's view with a historian's view is a lot more interesting than just choosing two books with opposing interpretations but I fear that it might not be appropriate.

Help?

For my history IA, I'm evaluating two secondary sources that state the same facts but explain different motivations behind the actions (Of the apathy of the US during the Holocaust), so they are completely contradictory, which makes my job of coming to a conclusion simple. In fact, I'm not using a single primary source. I think it's beneficial to use sources with opposing viewpoints because you can identify weaknesses in each argument. Also, Scope's reflection would be a primary source, like you've said. I don't think it would be wise to use it as a secondary source, like you've already said again. One because "he's not a historian!", and two because he would be EXTREMELY biased.

Does that help?

[Referos]

Yeah, I've realized it after I wrote 2 paragraphs that it wasn't a good idea: the result was getting pretty bad. So I've decided to base my IA on two secondary sources by two historians. They don't have totally different opinions, but they disagree at certain key points. Definitely made my analysis better and more appropriate.

Edited May 3, 2009 by Referos

[sweetnsimple786]

Okay. That sounds cool. The evaluation section seems so easy, but I could have easily messed up on that, even with OPVL.

Do you think it's a bad thing if you only have a few (literally, three) sources? Because I only used three. :/

I just turned my IA in today.. gotta say, I feel kinda free, although it technically won't be sent to be moderated for another year.

[Referos]

I've four sources, but I really only needed the two books by the these two historians to write my IA. The other two were basically some primary sources that I used once or twice just to illustrate a point or give an example. I'm planning on finding at least one more source, since all excellent IAs that I read had used 5+ sources, but I don't think the number of sources really matters in the end, as long as your IA is good.