Historical inquiry and research
Historical inquiry and research tests whether you can design an investigation into an event or place of significance to New Zealanders and justify your choices. Assessment rewards a focused question, defensible source selection and explicit evaluation of evidence - not narrative retelling.
Framing a research question
A strong question is narrow, answerable from available sources, and historical rather than moral. 'Was the 1951 waterfront dispute avoidable?' beats 'Was the waterfront dispute bad?' because it invites causal reasoning that evidence can test. State the scope explicitly: period, place, and people.
Selecting and evaluating sources
- Primary sources are produced in or near the period by participants or witnesses; secondary sources interpret later. Neither is automatically superior - usefulness depends on your question.
- Assess provenance (who, when, where), purpose, audience and context of production.
- Corroborate across independent sources before asserting a claim.
- Bias does not make a source useless: a 1951 employer pamphlet may be unreliable about workers' motives yet valuable evidence of employer rhetoric.
Worked example
Question: 'How did the 1951 waterfront dispute change state–union relations?' Sources: Waterfront Industry Commission records (detailed, institutional, written by the winning side), the Auckland Star and the locked-out union's newspaper, plus a later academic history. The union paper is partisan but is the best evidence of how watersiders framed their own cause; the Commission records reveal the state's legal strategy. The researcher notes a gap - no Māori watersider voices located - and limits the claim accordingly.
Traps that cost marks
Presentism; treating one vivid quotation as proof; relying only on secondary sources; describing a source rather than evaluating it.