A. Newspaper, 1976
A newspaper published in Auckland in 1976 reports on police operations targeting people suspected of overstaying visas.
Research question: How did mainstream newspapers portray Pacific migrants during the 1970s?
MODULE 0 · YEARS 12–13 · SELF-DIRECTED · ABOUT 20–30 MINUTES
Diagnostic: What do you already know?
This is not a memory test. The point is to work out where you should enter the unit. Senior source analysis is about justifying your judgement, not recognising vocabulary.
Do not look up definitions yet. For each case, write: (1) what kind of source it is for the stated question; (2) one thing it could help establish; (3) one thing you would still want to know before trusting a claim from it.
Six source cases
B. Historian, 2024
A university historian publishes an article comparing government records, newspaper coverage and oral histories about the same period.
Research question: What interpretations do historians offer for why the policy was pursued?
C. Census table
An official statistical table records population characteristics collected during a census.
Research question: What did the census count about a population at that time?
D. Oral history recorded decades later
In 2020, a participant describes what they remember experiencing in 1976.
Research question: How did people later remember and make sense of their experience?
E. Museum overview
A museum web page summarises an event using several published histories and collection items.
Research question: What basic people, dates and search terms should I investigate next?
F. AI answer
A generative AI system produces a fluent paragraph explaining an event. It gives no source beside several of its claims.
Research question: What evidence would I need before using these claims in my own work?
Second challenge: classify the reasoning
For each statement, decide whether you agree. Explain why.
- “Primary sources are more reliable than secondary sources.”
- “A biased source should not be used.”
- “If three websites repeat the same claim, the claim has been corroborated.”
- “A source can be primary for one research question and secondary for another.”
- “If AI gives me a plausible answer, I can cite the AI instead of finding the underlying evidence.”
Open only after you have answered: reasoning guide
A: primary evidence for the question about media portrayal, because the newspaper itself is the object being studied. It might be secondary reporting for a different question about what physically happened.
B: secondary scholarship for the stated question; the historian is interpreting evidence and other scholarship.
C: primary evidence for what the census recorded, but not a transparent window onto everything that existed. Definitions, collection methods and what the state chose to count still matter.
D: primary evidence for later memory and meaning-making. It can also provide testimony about 1976, but memory, elapsed time and interview context must be considered.
E: usually tertiary/orientation material in this use. It may contain or link to primary objects, which should be followed separately.
F: treat the output as a mediated claim-set that needs provenance. Your next task is not “believe or disbelieve the chatbot”; it is to identify what evidence would establish each important claim and trace it home.
The five statements should push you toward these ideas: source type is question-dependent; reliability is claim-specific; bias can itself be evidence; repeated copies are not necessarily independent corroboration; and AI does not remove the need for provenance.
Route yourself
If primary/secondary/tertiary felt uncertain
Do Module 1 next.
Go to Source Types →If classifications were easy but your reasons were vague
Skim Module 1, then do Module 2 carefully.
Go to Provenance →If the final five statements felt obvious
You may jump to Module 3 or 4, but return when later modules expose a gap.
Go to Finding Evidence →Keep one sentence
A senior source judgement is not a label. It is an argument about what a source can establish for a particular question.