Historical Research

Historical Research: Characteristics, Steps, Types and Uses
Historical Research
A. Definition and Areas of History
What is the first thing that comes in to your mind when you hear the word history? The word history
originally means the search for knowledge and truth.
• The systematic collection and evaluation of data to describe, explain, and understand actions
or events that occurred sometime in the past.
• There is no manipulation or control of variables as in experimental research.
• An attempt is made to reconstruct what happened during a certain period of time as
completely and accurately as possible.
B. Views on the Value of Historical Research
Historical investigations help broaden our experiences and make us more understanding and
appreciative of our human nature and uniqueness. By knowing our past, we know the present
condition better.
C. Historical Research as a Modern Undertaking
Most of those who engaged in historical writing intended for the most part to entertain or to inspire
their readers. (Van Dalen, 1972). He considered history as somewhat aiming for truth. (Thucydides)
D. Characteristics of Contemporary Historical Researches and Purpose
Present historical investigations primarily aim for critical search for truth.In making your historical
report the actual events and the conditions of the time are not violated, exaggerated, or distorted.
The critical used by historians maybe useful in providing you the guidelines in your historical study.
You may use them to assist you to judge objectively the conditions which led to their results
of the studies undertaken previously.
• To make people aware of what has happened in the past in order to:
– Learn from past failures and successes
– Apply them to present-day problems
– Make predictions
– Test hypotheses concerning relationships or trends
– Understand present educational practices and policies more fully
E. Methods of Historical Research
1.Formulating your problem
There are several motivations for undertaking a historical research.
● One of these is your doubt about some event,development or experience in the past.
● Another reason for a historical study may be your discovery of new source materials the
meaning of which will supply answers about past events when you make your
interpretations.
● Another source of your problem maybe a question regarding an old interpretation of an
existing data;you may want to evolve a new hypothesis which will offer a more satisfactory
explanation of past events.
You may have to take your time to look one by one at the important motives or reasons which
caused you to doubt or to get interested about certain gaps in knowledge in relation to past event or
experience. From here you may now draw a simple,clear,and a fairly complete description of your
problem.
2. Gathering your source materials
E-Content- Module 6- Research Methods and Statistics(Historical Research) Page 1

One of your important initial tasks as a historical researcher is the gathering of the best available data
to solve your problem. It is useful to look out for the many varied evidences of the activities engaged
in by people who lived in the past. It is necessary at this point to be familiar to the different types of
historical sources which you may avail of as you conduct your data collection.
A. Classifications of Historical Sources
Historical sources maybe classified as primary or secondary(Fox,1969)
A Primary source is regarded as the source of the “best evidence”.This is because the data come
from the testimony of able eye and ear witnesses to past events. They may also consist of actual
objects in the past which you can directly scrutinize or examine.
Secondary sources,on the other hand are informations supply who was not a direct observer or
participant of the event,object, or condition Another classification of historical sources is based on
whether the recording of the data was deliberate or inadvertent.
Deliberate sources provide data which have been recorded with the conscious effort to preserve
information (Fox,1969)
Inadvertent sources supply information also for your historical study even though that was not the
original intention of the source.
Good and Scates (1972) give two broad divisions which classify existing historical sources. These are:
(1) reports of events called documents, which are composed of impressions made on some human
brain by past events:these impressions have been consciously recorded with the aim of transmitting
information.
(2) Physical objects or written materials of historical value: these are called remains or relics and are
produced without deliberately aiming to impart information.
Van Dalen (1979) enumerates the types of historical records which may be available in written,
pictorial, and mechanical forms. These include official records, personal records, oral traditions,
pictorial records like photographs, paintings, sculpture, movies, microfilm, slides, and coins;
published materials like news papers, journals, pamphlets, literary and philosophical works and
periodicals; mechanical records like tape recordings of interviews and conferences, phonograph
records of speeches and reading activities; remains, which include physical remains, printed
materials, and hand written materials.
You now choose the evidence which is relevant to your problem.
B. Places where the sources are located
After the source materials have been classified and describe to you the next question will be “Where
are this material located?”
C. Systematizing your note-taking
This is necessary because of the presence of full bibliographical information in your notes system is
your basis for your proper documentation when you write your data in narrative form.
3. Criticizing your source materials
• Historical researchers use the following methods to make sense out of large amounts of data:
– Theoretical model leading to a content analysis
– Use of patterns or themes
– Coding system
– Quantitative data to validate interpretations
The terms external and internal refer to the purpose or objective of criticism and not to method or
procedure in dealing with the sources (Good and Scates, 1974)
A. External Criticism
External criticism involves finding out if the source material is genuine and if it possesses textual
integrity (Gay, 1972). There are several procedures which you can do to check the genuineness of the
source material.

The techniques you may do include authenticating signatures, chemically analyzing the paint, or
carbon-dating the artifacts. There are essentially two common tests that you will have to do in a
historical investigation.
1. Establishing authorship
2. establishing the place and date of publication of the source material.
Undoubtedly, you wanna check against forgeries, rule out plagiarism, pinpoint materials which are
not accurately identified, or put back a document to its original form.
B. Internal Criticism
To check on the meaning and trustworthiness of the data within the document. Much of your work in
internal criticism is textual criticism. However, your other concerns pertain to other factors like the
competence, good faith, position, and bias of the author.
1. Literal vs. the real meaning of the author's statement
The meaning of the many words in older documents is different from the meaning they have today.
Some words do not have the same meaning to all people. Different cultures and different eras have
different beliefs and attitudes about certain things.
Even in modern documents, the real meaning of a word or statement is difficult to ascertain
owing to allegory, use of symbolism, irony, satire, jests, allusions, hoaxes, implications, metaphor,
hyperboles and other rhetorical figures and literary ways of speaking.
2. Competence of the author or observer
There are several tests which you may use to determine the competence of an author.
These include his status as a trained observer or eyewitness, the extent to which his position for
making observation was favorable, to which memory was used after a lapse of time, and the use of
original sources. The current issues at the time he wrote the document, as well as the level of the
moral standards existing at the time will help you check his stand and convictions.
3. Testing for truthfulness and honesty
You may ask several questions to test the truthfulness and honesty of an author.
Was the author motivated by personal or vested interest in producing the material?
To what race, nationality, religion, ideology, social class, party, economic group, or profession did he
belong, which might led him to have biases and prejudices?
Was he writing seriously, ironically, humorously, or symbolically, or was he voicing his real
convictions?
Was he presenting the views of the establishment for public notice, using conventional language, to
write what he did not know or to conceal his own views?
Was there evidence of vanity or boasting by the author?
Did he make distortions, exaggerations, and embellishments, to achieve colorful effects?
A. Special problems in writing and interpreting your data
These problems include:
1. Determining the major problems to be aswered
2. using inductive reasoning
3. Formulating and testing your own hypothesis
4. Causation
5. Historical perspective
6. developing a guiding thesis or principles of synthesis
7. framing your generalization and conclusions
Types Of Historical Research
 A. Historical Events Research
 examines particular events or processes that occurred over short spans of time
 Methodological problems
 Meanings may have changed

 Information may not be complete
 B. Historical Process Research
 focus on how and why a series of events unfolded over some period of time
 Methodological problems:
 May place too much emphasis on the actions and decisions of particular actors
 Not always clear which example represents general pattern
 definitions may change over time relies on long-term records and archives
 C. Cross-Sectional Comparative Research
 comparing two or more social settings or groups (usually countries) at one particular
point in time
 comparability of measures across countries
 D. Comparative Historical Research
 combines historical process research and cross-sectional comparative research
 To understand causal processes at work within particular groups and to identify
general historical patterns across groups
 history has not been recorded accurately or reliably
 difficult to know how to deal with exceptions
 difficult to conclude that one factor (and not others) is what causes some
outcome
 groups being compared may not be independent (Galton’s Problem)
F. Strengths and Limitations of Historical Research
 Historical research can only give a fractional view of the past; its knowledge is never complete
and is derived from the surviving records of a limited number of past events.
 History also depends on valuable materials which are difficult to preserve.
 The historical method is unobtrusive
 The historical method is well suited for trend analysis.
 There is no possibility of researcher-subject interaction.
G. Weaknesses of Historical Method
 Some scholars contend that history requires a different method and interpretation because of
its elusive subject matter – the past.
 Another Weaknesses is the absence of the technical historical terminology in historical
research.
 Bias in interpreting historical sources.
 Interpreting sources is very time consuming.
 Sources of historical materials may be problematic
 Lack of control over external variables
Advantages and Disadvantages
of Historical Research
• Advantages
– Permits investigation of topics and questions that can be studied in no other fashion
– Can make use of more categories of evidence than most other methods (with the
exception of case studies and ethnographic studies)
–
• Disadvantages
– Cannot control for threats to internal validity
– Limitations are imposed due to the content analysis
– Researchers cannot ensure representation of the sample

Historical Research

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