Does primary source mean guaranteed unbiased and accurate?
- No
- Only when very old
- Yes, always
- Only when handwritten
Answer and explanation
No
Origin and proximity do not remove perspective or error.
Subjects
Historical method
Choose questions individually, practise online, or create a worksheet with matching answers. Counts include generated variants, not only authored originals.
Make a worksheet8 question instances
Sample exercises
Which question concerns provenance?
- Who created this document and in what context?
- How many decorative icons appear?
- What colour is the folder only?
- Can its title be shortened?
Answer and explanation
Who created this document and in what context?
Provenance describes origin and history.
Why do five websites repeating the same unverified account not provide five independent confirmations?
Answer and explanation
They may all derive from one source, sharing its errors. Independence concerns the evidence chain, not the number of copies.
Credit common origin.
Which is a more careful causal claim?
- Every old document proves the same cause
- The policy may have contributed alongside other conditions
- The event happened later, so this alone caused it
- Only one cause can ever exist
Answer and explanation
The policy may have contributed alongside other conditions
Causation needs more than temporal order.
A timeline runs from year 1450 to year 1520 without a calendar boundary issue. Find elapsed years.
Answer and explanation
70 years
1520−1450=70.
How can a biased source still be useful to a historian?
Answer and explanation
It may reveal the creator's aims, language, assumptions or perspective even when factual assertions need checking.
Credit usefulness with critical interpretation.
Study notes
Historical causation and comparing sources
Consider who created a source, when, for whom and for what purpose. A primary source is evidence from a context, not automatically unbiased truth.
Grades 9–12Historical causation and comparing sources · revision notes
Consider who created a source, when, for whom and for what purpose. A primary source is evidence from a context, not automatically unbiased truth.
Grades 9–12