Review It
You have completed two activities examining the treatment of the topics of the Haitian Revolution and the Mexican Revolution in several primary and secondary sources of information. In doing so, you compared the information included in various documents and identified the information that was unique to that particular source. You also looked at the date of creation, the author, the author’s purpose or audience, and the author’s point of view. Each of these characteristics may play a factor in the treatment of a topic in any given source of information.
Asking the right questions can help clarify similarities and differences in the information contained in primary and secondary sources on a topic.
COMPARING AND CONTRASTING TREATMENTS OF THE SAME
TOPIC IN SEVERAL PRIMARY AND SECONDARY SOURCES
Questions to Consider
What is the document?
When was the document created?
Who created it?
What was the author’s purpose in creating the document?
Who is the intended audience for the document?
What is the author’s point of view?
What information is corroborated by other sources?
What information is unique to this document?
Answers to these questions help clarify similarities and differences in information from different sources.
