Organizing Your Social Sciences Research Paper

A tertiary source consolidates and organizes primary and secondary source materials into one source in order to facilitate quick access to information. Tertiary sources are good starting points for research projects because they often extract the essential meaning or most important aspects of large amounts of information into a convenient format.

The distinctions between primary, secondary, and tertiary sources can be rather ambiguous depending upon the context in which an item is used. Some writers don't make a distinction between tertiary and secondary because both types of materials do not represent original works [i.e., primary sources]. However, for the purposes of reviewing the literature, it is important to understand how tertiary sources can contribute to the overall process of locating relevant information about a research topic.

Reviewing tertiary source materials can be of value in improving your overall research paper because they:

• Consolidate information in one place. Searching for information published in multiple sources takes time. A tertiary source, such as an directory, saves time because all the relevant information is compiled in one place.
• Facilitate comparing and contrasting information. One of the purposes of tertiary sources is to organize a lot of information in a way that facilitates easily comparing and/or contrasting the content. The information is formatted specifically to help the reader understand complex information or data.
• Publish regularly over a period of time. Some tertiary sources are published in predictable intervals, such as, almanacs, directories, or handbooks. This means they can be important sources of consistently presented information over time, providing a longitudinal perspective about the information they present.
• Distill large quantities of closely related information or data. A dictionary, specialized encyclopedia, or a statistical compendium can be used to review a large amount of information that would otherwise be difficult to synthesize and differentiate.
• Often contain references to additional sources. Many tertiary sources, in particular bibliographies, can be efficient places to go to locate key primary and secondary sources about a topic. In this way, they can be a good starting point when reviewing prior research on a topic.

Examples of tertiary sources you could review as part of your overall study include:
    * Abstracts
    * Almanacs
    * Bibliographies [also considered secondary]
    * Chronologies
    * Dictionaries and encyclopedias [also considered secondary]
    * Directories
    * Fact books
    * Handbooks
    * Indexes, databases, search engines, and bibliographies used to locate primary and secondary sources
    * Manuals
    * Statistical compendiums
    * Textbooks and course readers [may also be secondary]

Note that tertiary sources also include any type of user-contributed online resource such as Wikipedia.