Video Transcript
Anthony is reading an autobiography about a historic character. Is this a primary or a secondary source?
Let’s recall what we mean by primary and secondary data. Primary data is new information that is collected and organized directly by the researcher. Secondary data is public or existing information that is collected and organized by others.
This problem may at first be a little hard to understand, but it’s the meaning of autobiography which is particularly important here. An autobiography is a book about someone that is written by them about them. A biography, on the other hand, is also a book about someone, but it is written by a different person. A handy tip to remember is that autobiographies are almost always primary data, but biographies are almost always secondary data.
Other similar examples of primary data to autobiographies are diaries and letters. Using an autobiography is similar to asking that person questions about dates, times, or other factual information. So, in this question, because Anthony is reading an autobiography, then we can say that this is a primary data source.
