Historical Methodology Exam Prep

• These notes are designed to help you prepare for your Historical Methodology final exam.
• The content is structured into sections mirroring key topics: historical methodology, research processes, and literature reviews.

Historical Methodology

• Systematic framework historians use to study and interpret the past, ensuring narratives are based on accurate and reliable evidence.
• Primary goals include identifying and analyzing historical sources, evaluating authenticity and reliability, understanding provenance, and analyzing bias, perspective, and context.
• Vital for preventing the use of unreliable sources and ensuring historical narratives are grounded in unbiased evidence.

Types and Nature of Historical Sources

• Historical sources are the raw material of history that historians use to reconstruct and interpret historical events.
• Primary sources are original materials from the time period, such as letters and firsthand accounts.
• Secondary sources are interpretations or analyses of primary sources, like books or articles by historians.
• Tertiary Sources: Compilations or summaries providing overviews of primary and secondary materials.
• Sources are classified into written, archaeological, oral traditions, and visual.

Historical Criticism: Evaluating Sources

• A method to examine sources for authenticity, reliability, accuracy, and significance in reconstructing the past.

External Criticism

• Focuses on verifying the source’s authenticity by examining physical characteristics, origin, and provenance.
• Elements include provenance, material analysis, dating the source, and comparative analysis.

Internal Criticism

• Examines the meaning, accuracy, bias, and intent of the source.
• Includes content analysis, bias/perspective, contextualization, and cross-referencing.
• Prevents the use of unreliable sources, ensures narratives are accurate, and helps understand perspectives/contexts.

Examples of Historical Criticism in Practice

• Leopold von Ranke (Germany): Used primary sources like official documents.
• Marc Bloch (France): Focused on social history, verifying medieval records.
• Fernand Braudel (France): Verified maps, trade documents, and economic records for Mediterranean history.
• Edward Gibbon (UK): Verified ancient manuscripts to identify biases in Roman/Byzantine chroniclers.
• Teodoro Agoncillo (Philippines): Assessed authenticity of Katipunan documents to interpret historical narratives from the perspective of the Filipino masses.
• Renato Constantino (Philippines): Verified sources on colonial oppression and resistance movements.
• Zeus Salazar (Philippines): Reassessed pre-colonial texts, oral traditions, and indigenous sources.
• Reynaldo Ileto (Philippines): Verified religious texts, revolutionary documents, and folk narratives to reinterpret the meaning of Pasyon in revolutionary movements.
• Ambeth Ocampo (Philippines): Verified Rizal’s letters, diaries, and photographs to ensure authenticity.

Case Study: Evaluating Martial Law Sources

• Proclamation No. 1081 (Martial Law Declaration) is an official government document verified and preserved in government archives, but with a pro-Marcos bias.
• Oplan Sagittarius (Vera Files Report) is an alleged secret military plan leaked to journalists with an anti-Marcos perspective.
• This comparison highlights the need to evaluate both official and unofficial sources critically, considering authenticity, bias, and context.

Repositories of Primary Sources

• National Archives of the Philippines (NAP): Collects, stores, preserves, and makes available archival records.
• National Library of the Philippines (NLP): The official national library, housing a vast collection of books and documents.
• National Historical Commission of the Philippines (NHCP): Preserves and promotes Philippine historical heritage, likely including archival materials.
• National Museum of the Philippines (NMP): Houses artifacts and visual sources, contributing to historical research.

Research in History: Processes and Approaches

• Essential for uncovering and interpreting past events accurately.
• Driven by desires for academic/professional advancement, solving real-world problems, intellectual joy, and government directives.
• Defined as a systematic search for knowledge through objective methods.

Objectives of Research

• Exploratory: To gain familiarity with a phenomenon or discover new insights.
• Descriptive: Aims to accurately depict characteristics of individuals, groups, or situations.
• Diagnostic: Seeks to determine the frequency of an event or its relationship with other factors.
• Hypothesis-Testing: Investigates causal relationships between variables.

Types of Research

• Applied (Action): Focuses on solving practical problems in society/organizations.
• Fundamental (Basic or Pure): Aims at expanding knowledge without immediate practical applications.
• Quantitative: Involves numerical data and statistical analysis.
• Qualitative: Explores non-numerical data, such as experiences and perceptions.
• Descriptive: Focuses on describing the current state of affairs.
• Analytical: Uses existing facts/information and critically evaluates them.

Research Approaches

• Qualitative: Produces text-based results, focusing on meanings and experiences.
• Quantitative: Generates numerical data for statistical analysis.
• Mixed Methods: Combines both qualitative and quantitative techniques.

Philosophical Worldviews

• Postpositivist: Emphasizes empirical observation, measurement, and theory verification.
• Constructivist: Focuses on understanding meanings and social/historical contexts.
• Transformative: Research is political, power-conscious, and justice-oriented.
• Pragmatist: Problem-centered and real-world practice-oriented.

The Historical Research Process: Step-by-Step

• Identifying a Research Problem: Begins with a general topic and narrows to specific research questions.

Reviewing the Literature

• A written summary of journal articles, books, and documents describing past/current state of information on the topic.
• Steps include identifying key terms, locating literature, critically evaluating literature, and organizing using literature maps or matrices.
• Types: Thematic or study-by-study.

Specifying Purpose and Research Questions

• Purpose Statement: Advances overall direction, using key words like "The purpose of this study is…"
• Research Questions: Narrow purpose into specific questions researchers seek to answer.

Collecting Data

• Determine participants/sites and obtain permissions.

Qualitative Forms of Data

• Observations: Gathering open-ended, firsthand information by observing people/places, recorded in fieldnotes.
• Interviews: Asking open-ended questions, recording answers, transcribing/encoding for analysis.
• Documents: Public/private records (e.g., newspapers, journals).
• Audiovisual Materials: Images/sounds collected to understand the central phenomenon.

Analyzing and Interpreting Qualitative Data

• Organize data by developing matrices/tables of sources.
• Transcribe data (convert audiotape recordings/fieldnotes into text).
• Analyze using hand analysis or computer analysis with software like Atlas.ti.
• Validate findings through strategies like triangulation and member checking.

Reporting and Evaluating Research

• Research Report: Completed study reporting investigation, identifying questions, including data collected/analyzed/interpreted.
• Types: Dissertations/theses, journal articles, and conference papers.

Conducting a Literature Review: Strategies and Techniques

• A critical component of research, surveying scholarly sources to provide an overview of current knowledge.

Importance and Purpose

• Helps guide researchers in selecting better research problems/topics and ensures no duplication of other studies.

Characteristics of Related Literature Materials

• Must be as recent as possible, objective and unbiased.

Searching Efficiently

• Use boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) to refine searches.
• Relevant sources include databases like university library catalogues, Google Scholar, and JSTOR.

Guide Questions for Evaluation

• Do accumulated literature indicate gaps and inconsistencies you hope to fill?
• What data gathering instruments have been used?

Matrix of Literature

• Organize sources in a table format.

Common Structures for Organizing

• Chronological, thematic, methodological, and theoretical.

How to Write a Literature Review

• Use headings arranged in logical order to indicate main points.
• Give due credit by citing authors at sentence end.
• Paraphrase using your own words/style.

Emerging Trends and Key Areas in Historical Research

• Themes include the rise of civilizations, colonialism/imperialism, industrialization/urbanization, migration/biological exchanges, politics/war, and digital history