The accuracy of your family history rests on your ability to analyse critically.
Analysing sources, information and evidence helps you build conclusions you can trust, and defend if someone questions them.
Skip this step, or rush it, and you risk conclusions the evidence doesn’t support, no matter how much research you have done.
From sources to sound conclusions
The accuracy of your family history depends on four things:
- your choice of sources,
- the information you extract from them,
- the evidence you draw from that information, and
- the conclusions you reach.
Critical analysis underpins all of these decisions.
Start by analysing the source itself, its type, provenance and context. Sources may be original or derivative, contemporary to the events or produced later, published or unpublished.
Then look at the information the source contains. Interpret the information and apply it to your research question and it becomes evidence. Information may be primary, secondary or tertiary. Evidence may be direct, indirect or negative.
Inconsistencies in or between sources may provide valuable clues. Investigate them, and test alternative explanations before settling on a conclusion. This guards against confirmation bias, the tendency to notice only the evidence that fits what you already believe.
Analyse DNA evidence and documentary evidence together for the strongest picture, and use tools such as timelines, mind maps and the Tree Health Assessment Tool to spot patterns, gaps and weaknesses.
Your conclusions should be reasonable and defensible based on the evidence available, and open to revision if new evidence emerges.
Articles about analysing family history
Get started with these articles. They contain links to related articles.
Tackling research problems
Analysing your sources
Understanding family history sources: a guide to source types
Evaluating sources and information
For more articles about analysis, click on the Analysing Family History link
on the right side of the screen when on a blog post page or use the search bar to search for a specific topic.
Tools for analysing your family history
My Tree Health Assessment Tool helps you evaluate the strength of evidence across your family tree, and identify where more work is needed.
Mind mapping helps you analyse a problem or a question, brainstorm ideas and broaden your research.
Timelines are invaluable analytical tools that place people and events in place and time.