Chapter 22: Historical Research
Activity 22.1: Historical Research Questions
Activity 22.2: Primary or Secondary Source?
Activity 22.3: What Kind of Historical Source?
Activity 22.4: True or False?
Activity 22.1:
Historical Research Questions
Which of the following questions would lend themselves well to historical research?
- What was life like for a woman teacher in the 1920s?
- What sorts of techniques do speech teachers use to improve an individual’s ability to give an extemporaneous speech?
- How do art teachers teach drawing to primary school children?
- Is client-centered therapy more effective with teenagers than traditional therapy?
- What were the beginnings of the modern social studies?
- Is the deception of research subjects ever seen as appropriate by students?
- How were women portrayed in 1930s fiction?
- When should children be enrolled in swimming classes?
- How has the age of children leaving home changed between the years 1920 and 1980?
Activity 22.2:
Primary or Secondary Source?
In the space provided after each of the items listed below, write “P” if the item is a primary historical source or “S” if it is a secondary source.
- An essay written by an eighth grader in 1935 ______
- A 1945 photograph of a high school cheerleading squad ______
- A magazine article describing a school board meeting in 1920 ______
- A World War II veteran’s description of an air raid ______
- A history textbook ______
- A description of a scientific experiment carried out by one of the authors of this textbook ______
- A complete set of the Encyclopedia Britannica for years 1949-1953 ______
- Music charts composed for use by the Benny Goodman sextet in the 1930s ______
- A newspaper editorial commenting on the death of John F. Kennedy ______
Activity 22.3:
What Kind of Historical Source?
Match the historical source listed in Column B with the appropriate example in Column A.
Column A: Examples / Column B: Kind of Historical Source- ______A 1994 high school yearbook
- ______A table found in an eighteenth-century colonial home
- ______A baseball cap worn by Babe Ruth in the 1930s
- ______A copy of the Ph.D. dissertation of one of the authors of this text
- ______A letter written by the wife of Henry Kissinger
- ______A cartoon from a copy of a 1940s issue of Time magazine
- ______The diary of a nineteenth-century schoolmarm in rural Kentucky
- ______A copy of the year 2000 census report
- ______A school budget from a large urban high school district for the year 1984
- ______A recorded interview with folksinger Joan Baez
- Document
- numerical record
- oral statement
- relic
Activity 22.4:
True or False?
Write “T” in the space provided in front of each of the statements listed below that are true. Write “F” in front of each statement that is false.
- ______A major advantage of historical research is that it permits the study of certain kinds of topics and questions that can be studied in no other way.
- ______Internal criticism in historical research refers to the genuineness of the documents that the researcher uses.
- ______A primary source is a document prepared by an individual who was not a direct witness to an event.
- ______A disadvantage of historical research is that the measures used to control for internal validity in other kinds of research are not available in a historical study.
- ______It would be difficult to draw a representative sample of data when doing a historical study.
- ______Many historical studies are done in libraries.
- ______It would be unusual to find a hypothesis in a historical study.
- ______There is no manipulation of variables in historical research.
- ______“How were young women educated in nineteenth-century convent schools?” would be an example of a question investigated through historical research.
- ______“When was that document written?” is one example of a question that involved external criticism.
- ______The reading and summarization of historical data is rarely a neat, orderly sequence of steps to be followed.