The Role of Historical Research in Inquiry, Explained

UPI Study › Courses › Research Methods in Psychology › Free lessons › Lesson 6.3 Free with a free account

The Role of Historical Research in Inquiry

Research Methods in Psychology · Chapter 6: Qualitative Research MethodsSection 6.3 · lesson 37 of 9410 min · free with a free account

← Applying Case Study and Ethnographic ApproachesNext lesson: Building Theory from the Ground Up →

Earn 3 college credits for Research Methods in PsychologyRecommended for credit by NCCRS · Psychology 111 · self-paced · one payment, lifetime access
Enroll in Research Methods in Psychology · $250 →Download the syllabus (PDF)

In this lesson

Studying the past to understand the present and the patterns that shape both.

  • Define historical research within qualitative inquiry
  • Distinguish primary, secondary and tertiary sources
  • Apply external and internal criticism
  • Outline the historical research workflow

Free study notes

Get this lesson's notes by email

The key points and 4 practice questions with answers, in your inbox. One email, free.

One email. Unsubscribe in one click.

Transcript

Everything said in the video, section by section (1,354 words). Read along, or search it.

Qualitative Research Methods

Historical Research in Inquiry

The third qualitative tradition in this chapter studies something nobody can interview. The past. Historical research is the systematic study of past events, processes, and meanings. It works through preserved records, and through carefully reasoned interpretation. By the end of this section you will be able to define it, and place it within qualitative inquiry. You will distinguish primary from secondary sources, and know what each is good for. You will apply external and internal criticism to a piece of historical evidence. You will be able to outline a historical project, from question to finished narrative. And you will see both what this method reaches, and what it can never reach. That second half matters as much as the first.

Temporal Depth

Questions the Present Cannot Answer

Many of the most important questions social scientists ask have temporal depth. How did current educational institutions come into being? Why did particular policies succeed or fail at particular moments? How have ideas about gender, work, or mental health changed over the past century? Look at what those questions have in common. None of them can be answered by surveying living respondents. And none by observing present behavior alone. They demand historical research. It shares a commitment with ethnography and case study, to depth, context, and meaning. But it directs that commitment toward times the researcher cannot directly observe. The historian reconstructs what happened, why it happened, and what it meant. And does it from fragments that survived a long process of preservation and transmission.

Defining It

More Than Telling the Story

Historical research is not the same as writing history for a general audience. It differs from journalism, biography, and popular history in several respects. It works from primary evidence wherever possible. It applies systematic criteria to evaluate that evidence. It situates its findings within broader scholarly conversations. And it produces interpretations that other researchers can examine and challenge. That last point is the scientific one. A historical claim is not just a story you happen to find persuasive. It is an argument, offered with its evidence, and open to being taken apart. Remove any of those four commitments and you have narrative, not research.

Five Purposes

What Historical Research Is For

Historical research serves five common purposes, and most projects mix several of them. Reconstructive work establishes what happened. The chronology, the actors, and the circumstances of past events. Interpretive work analyzes why events unfolded as they did, and what they meant to participants. Comparative work examines similarities and differences across times, places, or groups. Critical work challenges received narratives. It recovers excluded perspectives, and exposes distortions in the existing record. And contextual work provides the background needed to make sense of the present. Notice that only the first is about establishing facts alone. The other four are about meaning, which is what makes this a qualitative method.

Primary Sources

Evidence From Inside the Period

All historical research rests on sources, so start with the central distinction. Primary sources originate from the period under study. They are the raw material of historical reconstruction. Letters, diaries, government records, newspaper articles from the time. Photographs, organizational documents, oral testimony from participants, and physical artifacts. Their proximity to the events they describe is their central strength. They offer direct access to the past, though never unmediated access. That qualification is doing real work. Their fragmentary, partial, and often biased character is their central limitation. A letter written on the day of an event can still be mistaken, or self-serving. Being close to something is not the same as being right about it.

Secondary And Tertiary

Context, and the Way In

Secondary sources are works produced later that interpret, analyze, or summarize primary material. Scholarly books, peer-reviewed articles, textbooks, and reference works. They do two jobs. They situate new research within existing scholarly conversations. And they guide researchers toward the relevant primary material. There is a third category as well, the tertiary source. Encyclopedias, bibliographies, and indexes, used for orientation and for finding further sources. Strong historical research uses primary sources for evidence, and secondary sources for context. And it clearly distinguishes between the two in its citations. Blur that line, and a reader cannot tell what you found from what you read.

Two Layers

External and Internal Criticism

Historians have long emphasized that a document must be evaluated before it is used. The traditional framework distinguishes two layers of evaluation. External criticism concerns the document itself. Is it what it appears to be? Was the letter actually written by the person whose signature it bears? Is the date correct? Is the manuscript an original, a contemporary copy, or a later reconstruction? External criticism establishes authenticity, before the content is examined at all. Internal criticism concerns the content of the document. Given that it is genuine, how accurate and reliable is what it says? Did the author have first-hand knowledge of the events described? Were they motivated to record events accurately, or did they have reasons to distort them? And how consistent is the document with other sources? That establishes credibility.

Sorting Questions

Which Layer Does This Belong To?

Sorting questions into those two layers is a skill worth practicing. Is this letter actually from Gandhi? That is external criticism. Is this manuscript a forgery, a copy, or an original? External again. Was the author present at the events described? Now you are inside the content, so that is internal criticism. Did the author have a stake in how the events were portrayed? Internal. Does this account align with other independent sources? Internal. The order of the two layers is not arbitrary. There is little point interrogating the content of a document that is a forgery. Authenticate first. Then ask how far to trust what it says.

Standpoint

There Is No Neutral Document

Now the idea that changes how you read every source you will ever handle. Historical sources were created by particular people in particular circumstances. With particular interests at stake. There is no such thing as a neutral document. That sounds like a reason to give up. It is not. The historian's task is not to find sources without a standpoint, because there are none. It is to read each source through its standpoint. Asking what it can credibly tell us, given who produced it and why. Triangulation helps, comparing multiple sources to corroborate or qualify a finding. And watch for anachronism, imposing concepts or values from a later period onto an earlier one.

The Workflow

Five Stages, Rarely Linear

A historical project moves through five recognizable stages. First, frame the question. Specify the period, the place, and the phenomenon. Second, identify sources. Locate relevant primary and secondary material. That means consulting finding aids, archives, and bibliographies. Third, evaluate the evidence, applying external and internal criticism. Assess authenticity, credibility, and representativeness. Fourth, synthesize and interpret. Compare evidence across sources, and place findings in context. Fifth, write the narrative. Construct a clearly argued, well-cited account that lets readers follow the reasoning. But the process is rarely linear. Later evidence frequently reshapes earlier interpretations, sending you back to revise the question.

Reach And Limits

What the Method Can and Cannot Do

Every method has a shape, defined as much by its limits as by its reach. Historical research reaches questions no other method can answer. And it cannot directly observe or interview the deceased. It reveals long-term processes that are invisible at any single moment. But it depends on what survives in the records. And the records that survive are not a random sample of the past. It provides essential context for present-day phenomena. Yet categories and concepts change across periods, which complicates comparison. It recovers excluded voices, and challenges received narratives. And reconstruction always involves interpretive judgment. One more consequence follows. History is rewritten, not finished. New sources surface, new questions arise, and new frameworks reshape what old evidence means.

Ethics And Next

Responsibilities to the Dead and the Living

Historical research does not involve living participants the way a survey does. It still carries distinctive ethical responsibilities. Researchers must represent past actors fairly, even when they cannot answer back. They must engage respectfully with descendant communities. Particularly when studying groups that were marginalized in their own time. Sensitive categories need care. Race, ethnicity, mental health, criminality. Historical terminology has to be handled with awareness of how it lands today. And researchers must acknowledge the limits of what surviving evidence can support. That last one is the discipline of the whole method, in a sentence. The next section turns to an approach aimed at building theory from data. Grounded theory.

About Research Methods in Psychology at UPI Study

Research Methods in Psychology (Psychology 111) is a self-paced online course of 94 video lessons in 16 chapters, from the scientific method and research ethics to designs, data collection, sampling, measurement, validity, experiments, descriptive statistics and hypothesis testing. It carries a NCCRS credit recommendation for 3 semester credits.

Every lesson transcript is free on pages like this one, and the videos are free with a free UPI Study account. Enrolling adds a practice quiz after each lesson, the graded work and final exam that earn the credit, lifetime access, and an official transcript on completion. UPI Study has helped over 130,000 students with college credits. ACE and NCCRS have over 2,100 cooperating colleges that will consider accepting credits; the final decision is with the universities.

Enroll now → Course details Download the syllabus All Psychology and social science courses Every course with PRO →

Compare: Research Methods vs Statistics

Why take it here

Why students take Research Methods in Psychology with UPI Study

How psychologists know what they knowResearch Methods in Psychology teaches how psychological studies are designed, run and judged: research ethics, surveys and observation, correlational and experimental designs, sampling, reliability and validity, and the statistics used to test hypotheses. It is a core course in psychology and many social-science degrees.
Credit at a fraction of the priceThe same 3 credits can cost $750 or more at a US college. Here it is one payment, self-paced, with lifetime access.
Finish your degree soonerTransfer credits reduce the courses you still owe, so you can graduate earlier or lighten a heavy semester.
Strengthen an applicationA completed college-level course on an official transcript shows admissions and scholarship committees you can do the work.
Study on your own scheduleNo start dates, no deadlines. Watch the lessons, practice, and take the final when you are ready.
130,000+students helped with college creditsACE and NCCRS have over 2,100 cooperating colleges that will consider accepting credits; the final decision is with the universities.

Where the credit goes

Universities that work with NCCRS

Research Methods in Psychology carries a NCCRS credit recommendation. These universities work with NCCRS; some are UPI Study's signed partners. ACE and NCCRS have over 2,100 cooperating colleges that will consider accepting credits; the final decision is with the universities.

Thomas Edison State UniversityThomas Edison State UniversitySigned partnerUniversity of the PeopleUniversity of the PeopleSigned partnerCharter Oak State CollegeCharter Oak State CollegeSigned partnerStrayer UniversityStrayer UniversitySigned partnerColumbia Southern UniversityColumbia Southern UniversitySigned partnerIndiana TechIndiana TechSigned partnerPenn StatePenn StateWorks with NCCRSSouthern New Hampshire UniversitySouthern New Hampshire UniversityWorks with NCCRSSUNYSUNYWorks with NCCRS +many more cooperating universitiesFind my college →

Find my college → Not listed? Ask Athena in the corner of this page, or book a 15-minute call.

FAQ

Questions students ask us

About The Role of Historical Research in Inquiry

What is the difference between primary and secondary sources in historical research?
Primary sources come from the period being studied, while secondary sources are later works that interpret or summarize primary material. Primary sources include letters, diaries, government records, newspapers from the time, photographs, and oral testimony. Secondary sources include scholarly books, journal articles, and textbooks. Tertiary sources, such as encyclopedias and bibliographies, help with orientation. Historians use primary sources as evidence and secondary sources for context.
What is external and internal criticism in historical research?
External criticism tests whether a document is authentic, while internal criticism tests whether its content is accurate and credible. External questions ask whether the author and date are genuine and whether it is an original, a copy, or a forgery. Internal questions ask whether the author had first-hand knowledge, had reasons to distort events, and agrees with other sources. Authenticity comes first, since a forgery's content is not worth weighing.
How is historical research different from popular history?
Historical research is a systematic, evidence-based argument rather than a narrative for a general audience. It works from primary evidence wherever possible, applies explicit criteria to evaluate that evidence, places its findings within ongoing scholarly conversations, and offers interpretations that other researchers can examine and challenge. Without those commitments, an account is narrative rather than research, however persuasive it may read.
What is anachronism in historical research?
Anachronism is imposing concepts or values from a later period onto an earlier one. It distorts interpretation because past actors understood their world through their own categories. Historians guard against it by reading each source in its context, asking who produced it and why, and triangulating across multiple sources. Because no document is neutral, the aim is to read each source through its standpoint rather than ignore that standpoint.

About the Research Methods in Psychology course

How many college credits is Research Methods in Psychology?
Research Methods in Psychology (Psychology 111) carries a NCCRS credit recommendation for 3 semester credits. ACE and NCCRS have over 2,100 cooperating colleges that will consider accepting credits; the final decision is with the universities.
How much does Research Methods in Psychology cost and what is included?
$250, paid once, with lifetime access: all 94 video lessons, a practice quiz after each, the graded work and final exam, and an official transcript when you finish. Students who want several courses choose UPI Study PRO instead.
Which universities accept UPI Study credits?
UPI Study has signed partner agreements with universities such as Thomas Edison State University, University of the People and Charter Oak State College, and works with universities such as Penn State, SNHU and SUNY. ACE and NCCRS have over 2,100 cooperating colleges that will consider accepting credits; the final decision is with the universities. Use "Find my college" on this page to check yours.
How long does Research Methods in Psychology take?
It is self-paced with no deadlines. The 94 lessons total about 16 hours of video; most students add reading and practice time and finish in a few weeks to a few months, on their own schedule.
How are the exams done?
Quizzes and assignments are online in the course. The final exam is taken online with proctoring; a person on the UPI Study team checks assignments, usually within two days.
How do my credits reach my college?
When the course shows 100% complete, request the official transcript from your dashboard. It is sent to the college you name, and you can send it to more than one. Check your college first with "Find my college" on this page, or ask Athena.

Ready for the full course? Earn 3 credits in Research Methods in Psychology.

94 video lessons, a quiz after each one, and the graded work that earns the credit. Recommended for credit by NCCRS.

Enroll in Research Methods in Psychology →Download the syllabusEvery course with PRO →
Research Methods in Psychology
3 credits · NCCRSEnroll →