Writing an Argumentative Research Paper

When conducting research you may come across many different types of sources and each source falls under a specific category. There are three main categories of sources which include Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary.

Primary source is a firsthand account of information by an individual with close connections to a topic. Ex: autobiographies, personal correspondences like diaries, government documents, documentaries, archives, works of art and literature, statistical data, and newspaper articles written by reporters close to the source. 

Secondary Source is a source that is not involved or close to the event, usually written after the event has happened. Secondary sources describe, analyze, interpret, comment, and summarize a primary source. Ex: biographies, interpretation of statistics and data,  book reviews, scholarly articles that talk about someone else's research, and anything written after an historical event that reevaluates what happened.

Tertiary sources contain information that is used to locate or find primary or secondary sources. Ex: almanacs, timelines, dictionaries and encyclopedias, directories, guidebooks, indexes, abstracts, manuals, and textbooks.