Concepts and Methodologies
Concepts and Methodologies
This domain tests how social scientists ask and answer questions: historical thinking, source evaluation, geography, economics, and basic data literacy. Expect questions that ask you to classify a source, identify bias or point of view, place events in chronological order, read a map or graph, and distinguish correlation from causation.
Core rules
- Primary sources are artifacts produced in the period under study (letters, laws, photographs, oral histories); secondary sources interpret or synthesize evidence (textbooks, documentaries, journal articles).
- Sourcing asks who made a source, when, for whom, and why. Corroboration compares multiple sources; contextualization situates evidence in time and place.
- Chronology uses both absolute dates and relative ordering; periodization is an interpretive choice, not a natural fact.
- Maps distort; check projection, scale, legend, and whether a thematic map shows absolute counts or rates. Population pyramids show age-sex structure, not total population alone.
- Economic reasoning uses opportunity cost, incentives, marginal analysis, and the distinction between correlation and causation.
Worked example
A question says: “A 1910 factory photograph shows only adult men; a 1910 census table shows thousands of women and children employed in the same industry. Which conclusion is best?” The photograph is a primary source but samples a single moment and may reflect the photographer’s purpose; the census is also contemporary but broader. The defensible answer is that the photograph is not representative of the whole labor force, so it should be corroborated with the census rather than treated as proof that women and children did not work. The reasoning is sourcing plus corroboration, not “the photo is old, so it is wrong.”
Traps
Calling a textbook “primary” because it contains quotations; assuming a source is unbiased because it is official; treating a thematic map’s darkest shade as the largest absolute number when it shows percentages; and inferring causation from two trends that merely move together.