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PESTLE Analysis
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A Step-by-Step Guide to Primary Source Analysis
Last Updated: May 25, 2017 by Kiesha Frue Filed Under: Marketing
Primary source analysis is exactly what it sounds like: an analysis of a primary source.
You probably heard the term “primary source” often in school. It’s referred to as a first-hand experience or account of an event, person, or object.
An audio recording of Martin Luther King Jr’s speech where he’s famously quoted saying “I have a dream” is a first-hand account. It’s his words recorded from his mouth . Someone else who quotes it would be a secondary source.
Primary sources are critical to research . It’s beneficial to understand how to do primary source analysis and justify the source correctly.
1. Start simple
Begin by answering a few basic questions.
What type of source is it? Primary sources can be letters, diary entries, data entries, interviews, or even photographs.
Next, who created it? Self-explanatory: put down the name of the author or person who provided the primary source.
When was it created? Again, quite simple. Write down the date the primary source was created. It may be difficult to know the exact date depending on the source.
2. The context
What led the author to develop this primary source? It might be a significant event in history. Or it could be a series of circumstances. It could even be because of a coincidence. Whichever the reason write it down.
Think of it like this: the person created the content because X event was taking place and he needed to contact Y with Z information.
3. Who is it for?
You may have already done so in the previous step, making this part easier to do. But it’s relatively straightforward. Who was the piece created for?
Letters are often addressed to one person. Diary entries are often directed to no one in particular. If it’s not directly obvious, consider who it could’ve been for.
4. A quick summary
Now address what the key points of the source were.
If it’s a longer entry, try to pick out critical pieces of information that sum up the piece. Try to answer what someone, who knows nothing about the source, needs to know to understand its significance.
Keep that in mind while you dissect the article.
5. Reliability
A primary source must be reliable. But it’s not enough to say that it is.
State how it is reliable (what makes it a primary source) and then explain why it’s significant. Such as: It’s a reliable source as it was created by X during a critical time and has been verified by Y group. It’s significant because…
Consider how it helps to understand the topic at hand. If it doesn’t address anything key within the topic, it may be reliable but not significant. If this is the case, rethink the primary source.
The significance part can be determined from step 3.
6. Question everything
While you answer the above questions, stop and think. Does any of it not make sense?
This can help with reflection or bring an extra level of research to the analysis. Write down your thoughts as you read through the primary source as well. They may come in handy later.
At this point, the primary source analysis has completed. It can be as extensive as you deem fit. So long as you have followed the above steps and answered them to prove reliability and significance, your work here is done.
Each step should be repeated for every additional primary source you have.
Image: Baimieng/ Shutterstock.com
How to Analyze a Primary Source
When you analyze a primary source, you are undertaking the most important job of the historian. There is no better way to understand events in the past than by examining the sources — whether journals, newspaper articles, letters, court case records, novels, artworks, music or autobiographies — that people from that period left behind.
Each historian, including you, will approach a source with a different set of experiences and skills, and will therefore interpret the document differently. Remember that there is no one right interpretation. However, if you do not do a careful and thorough job, you might arrive at a wrong interpretation.
In order to analyze a primary source you need information about two things: the document itself, and the era from which it comes. You can base your information about the time period on the readings you do in class and on lectures. On your own you need to think about the document itself. The following questions may be helpful to you as you begin to analyze the sources:
- Look at the physical nature of your source. This is particularly important and powerful if you are dealing with an original source (i.e., an actual old letter, rather than a transcribed and published version of the same letter). What can you learn from the form of the source? (Was it written on fancy paper in elegant handwriting, or on scrap-paper, scribbled in pencil?) What does this tell you?
- Think about the purpose of the source. What was the author’s message or argument? What was he/she trying to get across? Is the message explicit, or are there implicit messages as well?
- How does the author try to get the message across? What methods does he/she use?
- What do you know about the author? Race, sex, class, occupation, religion, age, region, political beliefs? Does any of this matter? How?
- Who constituted the intended audience? Was this source meant for one person’s eyes, or for the public? How does that affect the source?
- What can a careful reading of the text (even if it is an object) tell you? How does the language work? What are the important metaphors or symbols? What can the author’s choice of words tell you? What about the silences — what does the author choose NOT to talk about?
Now you can evaluate the source as historical evidence.
- Is it prescriptive — telling you what people thought should happen — or descriptive — telling you what people thought did happen?
- Does it describe ideology and/or behavior?
- Does it tell you about the beliefs/actions of the elite, or of “ordinary” people? From whose perspective?
- What historical questions can you answer using this source? What are the benefits of using this kind of source?
- What questions can this source NOT help you answer? What are the limitations of this type of source?
- If we have read other historians’ interpretations of this source or sources like this one, how does your analysis fit with theirs? In your opinion, does this source support or challenge their argument?
Remember, you cannot address each and every one of these questions in your presentation or in your paper, and I wouldn’t want you to. You need to be selective.
– Molly Ladd-Taylor, Annette Igra, Rachel Seidman, and others
Module 3: British North America (1640-1763)
Analyzing primary source documents, learning objectives.
- Describe methods for reading like a historian
- Analyze primary source documents
Now that you’ve had a chance to work through a HAPPY Analysis, let’s try it again with a few other examples.
First, watch this video to review each of the components in the HAPPY Analysis.
You can view the transcript for “HAPPY Document Analysis” here (opens in new window) .
Fill out this HAPPY chart for the primary source reading below. This is an open-ended exercise, but you can use the spaces below to jot down your ideas.
- Primary Source: Recruiting Settlers to Carolina, 1666
Critical Reading
When reading critically, you should circulate through these questions and techniques as you proceed. Normally, when we read casually, we start at the first word, read to the last word, and then put the writing away. But when reading critically, you will often need to read the material several times: perhaps once to start, then again to identify cues. You may want to read any difficult portions again slowly.
Once you think you have a good idea of what the author is saying, you should confirm that your theory is correct. Don’t simply assume that your first impression is complete. Look at the source again. What have you missed? What doesn’t fit with your understanding? What do you wish you knew? These are the areas to which you should pay extra attention. Particularly in historical sources, the author may be expressing a viewpoint that is radically different or alien to your own, one which it may take you several tries to process and identify. You don’t have to agree with the author, but you do need to understand what they say. The most important principle remains: keep returning to the material, identify any gaps in your understanding, and puzzle them out.
The critical reading and historical thinking skills you learn in this course can be applied to every message you encounter in life. Think of it as self-defense. If every author has a purpose, then every message they aim at you has a purpose too: whether they want you to buy something, to vote for someone, to believe something, or do something. You need to be able to clearly receive their message, and then to understand why it was sent and what it intends. Critical reading is a tool that enables you to process, comprehend, accept, and reject messages thoughtfully. If you can process the complex language and difficult viewpoints found in history, you can process anything.
In 1741 the Great Awakening preacher Jonathan Edwards delivered a famous sermon called “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” first in Northampton, Massachusetts and later in Enfield, Connecticut. As the title indicates, his purpose is to warn his listeners of their prospects for either salvation or damnation. As you closely read the excerpt, look for words that evoke visions of pain and suffering, and that seem intended to compel a sinner to take stock and repent.
Note that Edwards is practicing the art of rhetoric, or of choosing the right words and phrases to persuade a listener or reader to accept a given perspective and to act and respond in ways the speaker wishes to endorse. What does Edwards think is at stake in his effort to persuade, and why does this matter? What happens if one does or does not accept his reasoning?
These paragraphs are taken from the section of Edwards’ sermon called the application, where hearers are called to take action. We should expect the speaker’s efforts at persuasion to come into sharp focus here as previous appeals are brought together and restated or emphasized anew.
Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God
That world of misery, that lake of burning brimstone is extended abroad under you. There is the dreadful pit of the glowing flames of the wrath of God; there is hell’s wide gaping mouth open; and you have nothing to stand upon, nor anything to take hold of: there is nothing between you and hell but the air; ’tis only the power and mere pleasure of God that holds you up.
You probably are not sensible of this; you find you are kept out of hell, but don’t see the hand of God in it, but look at other things, as the good state of your bodily constitution, your care of your own life, and the means you use for your own preservation. But indeed these things are nothing; if God should withdraw his hand, they would avail no more to keep you from falling, than the thin air to hold up a person that is suspended in it….
The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect, over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked; his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times so abominable in his eyes as the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours. You have offended him infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince: and yet ’tis nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment; ’tis to be ascribed to nothing else, that you did not go to hell the last night; that you was suffered to awake again in this world, after you closed your eyes to sleep: and there is no other reason to be given why you have not dropped into hell since you arose in the morning, but that God’s hand has held you up; there is no other reason to be given why you han’t gone to hell since you have sat here in the house of God, provoking his pure eyes by your sinful wicked manner of attending his solemn worship: yea, there is nothing else that is to be given as a reason why you don’t this very moment drop down into hell.
O sinner! Consider the fearful danger you are in: ’tis a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire of wrath, that you are held over in the hand of that God, whose wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you as against many of the damned in hell; you hang by a slender thread, with the flames of divine wrath flashing about it, and ready every moment to singe it, and burn it asunder; and you have no interest in any mediator, and nothing to lay hold of to save yourself, nothing to keep off the flames of wrath, nothing of your own, nothing that you ever have done, nothing that you can do, to induce God to spare you one moment…
And now you have an extraordinary opportunity, a day wherein Christ has flung the door of mercy wide open, and stands in the door calling and crying with a loud voice to poor sinners; a day wherein many are flocking to him, and pressing into the kingdom of God […] And you children that are unconverted, don’t you know that you are going down to hell, to bear the dreadful wrath of that God that is now angry with you every day, and every night? Will you be content to be the children of the devil, when so many other children in the land are converted, and are become the holy and happy children of the King of kings?
And let everyone that is yet out of Christ, and hanging over the pit of hell, whether they be old men and women, or middle aged, or young people, or little children, now hearken to the loud calls of God’s Word and providence. This acceptable year of the Lord, that is a day of such great favor to some, will doubtless be a day of as remarkable vengeance to others…
Therefore let everyone that is out of Christ, now awake and fly from the wrath to come. The wrath of almighty God is now undoubtedly hanging over great part of this congregation: let everyone fly out of Sodom. Haste and escape for your lives, look not behind you, escape to the mountain, lest you be consumed [ Genesis 19:17 ].
- How to Read Primary Sources. Authored by : Thomas de Mayo. Provided by : Reynolds Community College. Located at : http://www.reynolds.edu/ . License : CC BY: Attribution
- Primary Source: Jonathan Edwards revives Northampton, Massachusetts, 1741. Provided by : The American Yawp. Located at : http://www.americanyawp.com/reader.html . License : CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
- HAPPY Document Analysis. Authored by : K Runyen. Located at : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjJ9jMjtsIQ . License : Other . License Terms : Standard YouTube License
Analyzing Primary Sources: Strategies & Activities
When first starting out teaching with primary sources, we recommend trying out the Library of Congress Primary Source Analysis Tool (see Analyzing Primary Sources: Tools & Guides ). Below, we have compiled a rich list of primary source analysis strategies and activities developed by the Library, TPS Consortium partners, and teacher pros in the field.
Library of Congress
- 10 Ways to Enrich Your Classroom with Primary Sources – Part 1
- 10 Ways to Enrich Your Classroom with Primary Sources – Part 2
- Creating Ripples of Change with Primary Sources from the Library of Congress revising writing based on new information
- Primary Source Activities for the K-2 Classroom
- Using Claim, Evidence, and Reasoning (CER) with Primary Source Analysis
- What’s It All About? Capture the Heart of a Primary Source in a Headline
Primary Source Nexus
- 3D Pyramid created by Historica Canada
- Analyzing Primary Sources for Scientific Thinking & Organization guest post from Tom Bober
- Bloom’s Taxonomy Image Writing Prompts
- Determining the Main Idea of a Text guest post from Glenn Jensen
- Event Happenings
- Frozen Living Pictures
- Early Elementary
- Later Elementary
- Middle School
- Image Questions & Responses
- Image Sequencing Activities
- Journalistic Analysis
- K-5 Image Writing Prompts & Activities
- Let’s Recap & Primary Source Analysis guest post from Heather Klos
- Post-It App & Primary Source Analysis guest post from Tom Bober
- Predicting & Inferring with Primary Sources & Literature guest post from Kimberly Heckart
- Primary Source Analysis using Google Forms Kelly Grotrian
- Primary Source Thinking Triangle Activity
- Question Cubes
- Sensory Exploration
- Shake & Source Newspaper Game guest post from Ruth Ferris
- Using Primary Sources with 21st-Century Learners guest post from Heather Klos
- Using Skitch & Evernote to Analyze Images guest post from Kerry Gallagher
- Zoom-in to Primary Source Analysis guest post from Patti Winch
- 25 Questions to Ask Your Primary Source
- Analyzing Multiple Perspectives Worksheet
- E-S-P Analysis Worksheet
- Fishbowl Analysis Activity
- Graphic Organizer Worksheets
- HIPPO Analysis Worksheet
- Image Analysis Form
- Primary Source Investigation
- Synthesizing Sources
- T-Chart Worksheet
- Text-Context-Subtext
- Text-Context-Subtext in 3 Columns
- Thinking Like a Historian checklist
- Venn Diagram Worksheet
- Writing from Documents Worksheets
State Historical Society of Iowa
- Guided Inquiry Instructions
- Guided Inquiry Example
- Primary vs. Secondary Sources
- What is Inquiry?
- Gallery Walk
- Question Formulation Technique (QFT)
- Analyze That!
- 6-8: Gallery Walk
- 6-8: Question Formulation Technique
- 6-8: Analyze That!
TPS UArts Teacher Guides
- A is for Everything: How Typography Shapes our Language and Culture
- Amplifying Our Voices Through Music
- The City as a Primary Source
- Cross-Pollination: Botanical Illustrations
- Igniting Inquiry: Using Compelling Arts-based Primary Sources to Inspire Student Writing Across Disciplines
- Look Back, See Further: Studying photographs and drawing connections between primary sources from the Library of Congress and local collections.
- Pictures Worth Reading: A Teacher’s Guide to Comics
- The Power of the Poster: Connecting WPA Posters from the Library of Congress to Local Collections
- Roaring Twenties Redux: A Survey of the Arts of the 1920s
- TPS-STEM to STEAM
TPS SIUE Resources
- 15 Things You Can Do with Narratives
- Analyzing Narratives Activity – Topic: Lincoln’s Assassination Elementary/Middle School
- Fishbowl Analysis with Primary Sources – Topic: Poetry/Complex Primary Sources
- Mind Walk Elementary/Middle School
- Museum Gallery Walk – Topic: Woman Suffrage Elementary
- Primary Source Strategies and Books – Topic: “Fairness” Elementary
- Teaching Ideas with Historic Newspapers
C3 Teachers Inquiry Design Model
- Building Inquiries in Social Studies
- IDM At a Glance (.pdf)
- Three Supporting Question Template (.docx)
- Four Supporting Question Template (.docx)
- Focused IDM Blueprint Template (.docx)
- IDM’s Using Library of Congress Resources
Collaborative for Education Services: Emerging America
- Accessibility Resources & Tools
- Assessment Strategies
- Engagement Strategies
- Quadrant Analysis Emerging America
Maryland Public Television
- Analyzing Primary Sources: Insights and Inquiry self-paced online lesson
- Case Maker civics-related primary source analysis challenges
- Inquiry Kits Elementary, U.S. Government, U.S. History, World History
Stanford History Education Group
- Historical Thinking Chart
- History Assessments of Thinking
TPS Rockford University Videos
- Creating a Traveling Primary Source Bulletin Board 3:02
- Using Primary Sources to Teach Hometown History 2:57
TPS Civics Interactives 6 digital learning platforms with a variety of lessons/activities analyzing primary sources
TPS Western Region
- Brain Movers 47 ready-made primary source analysis activities
Right Question Institute
- Question Formulation Technique with Primary Sources
Minnesota Historical Society: Inquiry in the Upper Midwest
- Culturally Relevant Pedagogy with Primary Sources videos
University of South Alabama
- Applying Project Zero’s “Artful Thinking” Routines to Visual Images from the Library of Congress webinar recording 34:24
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