Source Based Questions: Study All Sources

Very often, students encounter a question which says, "Study all sources. To what extent do the sources tell/show us that ... ?" This part normally has the highest weightage of all source based questions. In fact, it's not uncommon for "study all sources" questions to be worth up to 30% of the total allocation to source based questions. As such, it is important to nail the question. Here are some tips to answer such a question.

• Remember to use all sources. This sounds obvious, but you will be surprised at the number of people that only use one or two sources!
• This is a "to what extent" question. It is highly unlikely that all the sources will help to show the assertion! It is also unlikely that none of the sources will help to show the assertion. What is much more likely is that around half of the sources will help to show the assertion, while the other half will give evidence against the assertion.
• State clearly which sources support the assertion. This must be done unequivocally (without any room for doubt), e.g. "Source A supports the assertion as..." or "Source B does not support the assertion as..."
• Besides stating clearly which sources support/do not support the assertion, remember to explain why. When explaining why, you should obtain the key idea from the source. Furthermore, directly quote words/phrases from the source (if it is a text source) or describe the source (if it is a picture).
• In order to score full marks, it helps to comment on the reliability of at least one source. If the source is very reliable, it will certainly count as strong evidence in supporting the assertion given in the question. Think of it as a "star witness". On the other hand, unreliable sources are like shoddy witnesses. That said, there is no need to comment on the reliability of every source - that would take away valuable time from the other questions. I emphasize again that commenting on the reliability of the source should be done only if you have the time. You may gain one mark from a valid comment, but if you lose three marks from being unable to finish the paper, it would not be worth it.
• Last but not least, give a conclusion. Your conclusion should clearly answer "to what extent". Note that in answering "to what extent", you should not simply count the number of sources that agree or disagree with the assertion. A common mistake is to say, for example, "The sources show that Hitler's economic policies were bad to a large extent, because three sources say that they were bad and one source says they were good." Instead, give a more reasoned analysis. For example, provided this is supported by the evidence, you can say that "Hitler's economic policies were good for the Aryans (white people) but bad for the Jews and other minorities." Then illustrate how the sources which show good effects of Hitler's economic policies show that Aryans benefited, while sources which show negative effects tend to focus on minorities. Alternatively, you can say that "Hitler's economic policies were good when he first came to power but bad when the war started...". Then support your claim in a similar fashion. In short, it is often worthwhile to see whether the assertion is true in certain ways, but false in other ways. That could give you top marks for source based questions.

Enough of plain talk. Let's take a look at an actual example, which I've come up with below. The photo is taken from TIME, which in turn took it from a private collection. But for the purposes of this question, let's just assume its provenance was a Nazi propaganda newspaper. To make sure this article isn't too long, I've only illustrated what to do for one source (though it will be easy to generalize to questions involving multiple sources). 

Q: To what extent do all sources show that Hitler was a well-liked leader?

Source B: Photograph of Hitler from a propaganda newspaper in 1937.

Suggested answer (my comments in italics):

The sources show to a small/large extent (choose small or large, depending on what the other sources say. But it's not important for our purposes today).

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Source B supports the assertion because it shows that Hitler was adored by a considerable number of Germans. (main point of the picture) The photo shows hundreds of Germans eager to meet him and giving him the Hitler salute. (use details from the source). One might therefore think that he received a significant amount of support from the population.

However, one must not be took quick to draw too strong an inference from Source B because it was published in a propaganda newspaper. The crowds could have been arranged by the Nazi government, and even if it were not pre-arranged, the crowds might only contain the most fanatic of Nazi supporters. (comment on reliability)

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