Question

Are there additional methods  to answer a research question?

Answer 1

You have to be much more picky with sources to meet this need because only certain choices can do the job. Whether you can use quantitative or qualitative data depends on what your research question itself calls for. Only primary and secondary sources can be used to answer your research question and, in addition, those need to be professional and/or scholarly sources for most disciplines (humanities, social sciences, and sciences). But the arts often accept popular sources as primary or secondary sources to answer research questions. Also, the author’s purpose for most disciplines should be to educate and inform or, for the arts, to entertain and perhaps even to sell.

As you may remember, primary sources are those created at the same time as an event you are researching or that offer something original, such as an original performance or a journal article reporting original research. Secondary sources analyze or otherwise react to primary and secondary sources. Because of the information cycle, the latest secondary sources are often the best because their creators’ have had time for better analysis and more information to incorporate.