Historical Skills: Interpretation, Comparison and Evaluation of Sources
Historical Skills: Interpretation, Comparison and Evaluation tests your ability to judge sources, not merely understand them. The exam asks what a source means, how it relates to another, and how far it can be trusted for a given purpose.
Core criteria
- Interpretation: identify the claim, tone, assumptions and implied audience. Distinguish what is said from what is implied.
- Comparison: compare like with like. Ask whether the sources address the same event, period and question.
- Evaluation: use provenance, purpose, audience, genre, date, content, silence and corroboration. Reliability is relative to the question, not a fixed quality.
- Corroboration: independent agreement strengthens; disagreement needs explanation, not dismissal.
Worked example
Compare the 1916 Proclamation with a contemporary Irish Times editorial. The Proclamation is a declaration of legitimacy addressed to 'Irishmen and Irishwomen' and to posterity; its purpose is to claim a mandate and to frame the Rising as a national act. The editorial speaks to a unionist and constitutionalist readership; its purpose is to restore order and deny legitimacy. They disagree on authority and sacrifice, but agree on the fact of the Rising and its disruption. For a question about republican ideology, the Proclamation is central; for a question about unionist and constitutionalist reaction, the editorial is. Neither is simply 'biased'.
Traps
- Discarding a source because it is biased.
- Comparing sources that do not address the same issue.
- Evaluating content only and ignoring provenance and audience.
- Paraphrasing instead of analysing.
- Treating a later source as automatically more reliable, or memory as transparent.