See the google document for this chapter here: 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DgHZAseZ5CgXpGla7e_yg83LRnF3Enm1L8HpxaLJ1-c/edit

1. Distinguish between opinions and facts, and analyze how each influences the formation of arguments, recognizing the importance of evidence-based reasoning in critical thinking.

2. Evaluate the credibility of sources and evidence to differentiate factual arguments from opinions, enhancing skills in critical analysis and information literacy.

3. Apply critical thinking strategies to assess the validity and reliability of information, fostering the ability to construct and defend fact-based arguments in diverse contexts.

7.3: Fact or Opinion

• Ohio State University Libraries

Thinking about the reason an author produced a source can be helpful to you because that reason was what dictated the kind of information they chose to include. Depending on that purpose, the author may have chosen to include factual, analytical, and objective information. Or, instead, it may have suited their purpose to include information that was subjective and therefore less factual and analytical. The author’s reason for producing the source also determined whether they included more than one perspective or just their own. 

Authors typically want to do at least one of the following:

• Inform and educate

• Persuade

• Sell services or products or

• Entertain

Combination of Purposes

Sometimes authors have a combination of purposes, as when a marketer decides they can sell more smartphones with an informative sales video that also entertains us. The same is true when a singer writes and performs a song that entertains us but that they intend to make available for sale. Other examples of authors having multiple purposes occur in most scholarly writing.

In those cases, authors certainly want to inform and educate their audiences. But they also want to persuade their audiences that what they are reporting and/or postulating is a true description of a situation, event, or phenomenon or a valid argument that their audience must take a particular action. In this blend of scholarly author’s purposes, the intent to educate and inform is considered to trump the intent to persuade.

Why Intent Matters

Authors’ intent usually matters in how useful their information can be to your research project, depending on which information need you are trying to meet. For instance, when you’re looking for resources that will help you actually decide how to answer your research question or evidence for your answer that you will share with your audience, you will want the author’s main purpose to have been to inform or educate their audience. That’s because, with that intent, they are likely to have used:

• Facts where possible.

• Multiple perspectives instead of just their own.

• Little subjective information.

• Seemingly unbiased, objective language that cites where they got the information.

The reason you want that kind of resource when trying to answer your research question or explaining that answer is that all of those characteristics will lend credibility to the argument you are making with your project. Both you and your audience will simply find it easier to believe—will have more confidence in the argument being you are making—based on your selected resources.

Resources whose authors intend only to persuade others won’t meet your information need for an answer to your research question or evidence with which to convince your audience. That’s because they don’t always confine themselves to facts. Instead, they tell us their opinions without backing them up with evidence. If you used those sources, your readers will notice and not believe your argument.

Fact vs. Opinion vs. Objective vs. Subjective

Need to brush up on the differences between fact, objective information, subjective information, and opinion? 

Fact – Facts are useful to inform or make an argument.

Examples:

• The United States was established in 1776.

• The pH levels in acids are lower than pH levels in alkalines.

• Beethoven had a reputation as a virtuoso pianist.

Opinion – Opinions are useful to persuade, but careful readers and listeners will notice and demand evidence to back them up.

Examples:

• That was a good movie.

• Strawberries taste better than blueberries.

• George Clooney is the sexiest actor alive.

• The death penalty is wrong.

• Beethoven’s reputation as a virtuoso pianist is overrated.

Objective – Objective information reflects a research finding or multiple perspectives that are not biased.

Examples:

• “Several studies show that an active lifestyle reduces the risk of heart disease and diabetes.”

• “Studies from the Brown University Medical School show that twenty-somethings eat 25 percent more fast-food meals at this age than they did as teenagers.”

Subjective – Subjective information presents one person or organization’s perspective or interpretation. Subjective information can be meant to distort, or it can reflect educated and informed thinking. All opinions are subjective, but some are backed up with facts more than others.

Examples:

• “The simple truth is this: As human beings, we were meant to move.”

• “In their thirties, women should stock up on calcium to ensure strong, dense bones and to ward off osteoporosis later in life.”*

*In this quote, it’s mostly the “should” that makes it subjective. The objective version of the last quote would read: “Studies have shown that women who begin taking calcium in their 30s show stronger bone density and fewer repercussions of osteoporosis than women who did not take calcium at all.” But perhaps there are other data showing complications from taking calcium. That’s why drawing the conclusion that requires a “should” makes the statement subjective.

Exercise: Fact, Opinion, Objective, or Subjective?

An interactive H5P element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here:

https://minnstate.pressbooks.pub/ctar/?p=112#h5p-16 

This page titled 7.3: Fact or Opinion is shared under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Ohio State University Libraries via source content that was edited to the style and standards of the LibreTexts platform; a detailed edit history is available upon request. 

When you make distinctions between primary, secondary, and tertiary sources, you are relating the information to the context in which it was created. Understanding this relationship is an important skill that you’ll need in college, as well as in the workplace. The relationship between creation and context helps us understand the “big picture” in which information operates and helps us figure out which information we can depend on. That’s a big part of thinking critically, a major benefit of actually becoming an educated person. 

Primary Sources – Because it is in its original form, the information in primary sources has reached us from its creators without going through any filter. We get it firsthand. Here are some examples that are often used as primary sources:

• Any literary work, including novels, plays, and poems.

• Breaking news.

• Diaries.

• Advertisements.

• Music and dance performances.

• Eyewitness accounts, including photographs and recorded interviews.

• Artworks.

• Data.

• Blog entries that are autobiographical.

• Scholarly blogs that provide data or are highly theoretical, even though they contain no autobiography.

• Artifacts such as tools, clothing, or other objects.

• Original documents such as tax returns, marriage licenses, and transcripts of trials.

• Websites, although many are secondary.

• Buildings.

• Correspondence, including email.

• Records of organizations and government agencies.

• Journal articles that report research for the first time (at least the parts about the new research, plus their data).

Secondary Source – These sources are translated, repackaged, restated, analyzed, or interpreted original information that is a primary source. Thus, the information comes to us secondhand, or through at least one filter. Here are some examples that are often used as secondary sources:

• All nonfiction books and magazine articles except autobiography.

• An article or website that critiques a novel, play, painting, or piece of music.

• An article or web site that synthesizes expert opinion and several eyewitness accounts for a new understanding of an event.

• The literature review portion of a journal article.

Tertiary Source – These sources further repackage the original information because they index, condense, or summarize the original. 

Typically, by the time tertiary sources are developed, there have been many secondary sources prepared on their subjects, and you can think of tertiary sources as information that comes to us “third-hand.” Tertiary sources are usually publications that you are not intended to read from cover to cover but to dip in and out of for the information you need. You can think of them as a good place for background information to start your research but a bad place to end up. Here are some examples that are often used as tertiary sources:

• Almanacs.

• Dictionaries.

• Guide books, including the one you are now reading.

• Survey articles.

• Timelines.

• Bibliographies.

• Encyclopedias, including Wikipedia.

• Most textbooks.

Tertiary sources are usually not acceptable as cited sources in college research projects because they are so far from firsthand information. That’s why most professors don’t want you to use Wikipedia as a citable source: the information in Wikipedia is far from the original information. Other people have considered it, decided what they think about it, rearranged it, and summarized it–all of which is actually what your professors want you, not another author, to do with the information in your research projects.

The Details Are Tricky— A few things about primary or secondary sources might surprise you:

• Sources become primary rather than always exist as primary sources.

It’s easy to think that it is the format of primary sources that makes them primary. But that’s not all that matters. So when you see lists like the one above of sources that are often used as primary sources, it’s wise to remember that the ones listed are not automatically already primary sources. Firsthand sources get that designation only when researchers actually find their information relevant and use it.

For instance: Records that could be relevant to those studying government are created every day by federal, state, county, and city governments as they operate. But until those raw data are actually used by a researcher, they cannot be considered primary sources.

Another example: A diary about his flying missions kept by an American helicopter pilot in the Viet Nam War is not a primary source until, say, a researcher uses it in her study of how the war was carried out. But it will never be a primary source for a researcher studying the U.S. public’s reaction to the war because it does not contain information relevant to that study.

• Primary sources, even eyewitness accounts, are not necessarily accurate. Their accuracy has to be evaluated, just like that of all sources.

• Something that is usually considered a secondary source can be considered a primary source, depending on the research project.

For instance, movie reviews are usually considered secondary sources. But if your research project is about the effect movie reviews have on ticket sales, the movie reviews you study would become primary sources.

• Deciding whether to consider a journal article a primary or a secondary source can be complicated for at least two reasons.

First, journal articles that report new research for the first time are usually based on data. So some disciplines consider the data to be the primary source, and the journal article that describes and analyzes them is considered a secondary source.

However, particularly in the sciences, the original researcher might find it difficult or impossible (he or she might not be allowed) to share the data. So sometimes you have nothing more firsthand than the journal article, which argues for calling it the relevant primary source because it’s the closest thing that exists to the data.

Second, even journal articles that announce new research for the first time usually contain more than data. They also typically contain secondary source elements, such as a literature review, bibliography, and sections on data analysis and interpretation. So they can actually be a mix of primary and secondary elements. Even so, in some disciplines, a journal article that announces new research findings for the first time is considered to be, as a whole, a primary source for the researchers using it.

This page titled 7.4: Primary, Secondary and Tertiary Sources is shared under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Ohio State University Libraries via source content that was edited to the style and standards of the LibreTexts platform; a detailed edit history is available upon request.

OER Links we started with:

4. Opinions vs Fact 

1. Fact or Opinion by Ohio State University Libraries 

2. 7.4 Critical thinking 4th paragraph down Factual Arguments vs Opinions