7.3: Selecting Source Types

What Are the Types of Sources?

In today’s complex information landscape, just about anything that contains information can be considered a source. This includes the following:

• books and encyclopedias
• websites, web pages, and blogs
• magazine, journal, and newspaper articles
• research reports and conference papers
• manuals, presentation slides, operation logs, video demo/recordings
• interviews and surveys
• photographs, paintings, images
• TV and radio programs, podcasts, movies, and videos

With so many sources available, the question is which ones will best meet your information needs. Being able to categorize a source helps you understand the kind of information it contains. A source can be categorized by asking questions about it.

Question #1: Why Was the Source Created?

When you encounter a source, you should ask yourself, “Why was this source created?” or, in other works, what is its purpose? This is helpful to consider because the source’s purpose dictates its contents. Depending on that purpose, the author may choose to include factual and/or analytical information or, instead, information that was meant to be entertaining.  Authors typically want to achieve one or more of the following: inform and educate, persuade, entertain.

Authors’ intent matters because it will impact what information they include and how they present that information. For instance, when you’re looking for sources that will help answer your research question and/or be used in your ENGL 250 report, you will want the author’s purpose to have been to inform or educate their audience. Why? With that intent, authors are likely to use facts where possible, multiple perspectives instead of just their own, little subjective information, and unbiased, objective language that cites other sources of information. Those characteristics will lend credibility to this type of source.

Sources whose authors intend only to persuade their audience typically won’t be sufficient because they don’t always confine themselves to facts. Instead, they often share personal opinions without backing them up with evidence.

It’s especially important to verify the purpose in the case of online sources. Let’s say that you find a social media infographic about the health benefits of elderberry syrup. An individual user or an organization took the time to create the post. Why did they do that work? Are they trying to sell you elderberry syrup or are they from a government health organization trying to combat misinformation about health supplements? The answers will help you decide whether you can trust the source.

Question #2: How Will You Use the Source?

Another way to categorize a source is by the type of information it offers and by the role it will play in your technical communications.

Primary sources present data collected by their authors. Some examples include

• survey data;
• experimental data/results;
• eyewitness accounts; and
• interviews.

When you work with primary sources, you are expected to provide the interpretation/analysis.

Secondary sources interpret and analyze information from primary sources. You should use secondary sources when you’re interested in the analysis of others. Here are some examples:

• a scholarly journal article that uses data from several primary sources to present a complex argument about a certain engineering trend’
• an article that critiques a new piece of software; and
• an article/ blog post that summarizes and synthesizes several eyewitness accounts for a new understanding of an event.

Question #3: Who Is the Intended Audience for the Source?

We can categorize information by the expertise of its intended audience. Analysis of the intended audience—how much expertise one has to have to understand the information—can help you determine whether the source has sufficient credibility and thoroughness to meet your needs. When you are writing reports for a post-secondary course, academic articles (peer-reviewed) are usually the best source. In the workplace, however, you may be researching something that doesn’t have many peer-reviewed articles about it yet, or you may only need a basic understanding of the topic. You may need to use a combination of peer-reviewed and non-peer-reviewed sources, depending on the context/ scenario.