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Citation Assessment Dialog

This dialog box is displayed when you click on "<more options...>" in the Assessment field of a source citation. Citations can be assessed under up to four categories:

Warning
Evidence
Information
Source

All four categories are optional. Under each category, you have a choice of two options, but there is no need to choose either of them, and typically you won't. For example, if you are not concerned about a source citation, you should not tick either of the options in the Warning category. The options in each category are mutually exclusive. If you tick one, the other will become unticked. For example, you can choose Questionable or Unreliable for 'Warning', but not both. If you don't want either, make sure that both are unticked (if an option is ticked, click on it to untick it).

Warning

Questionable	Questionable reliability of evidence - which might apply to interviews, census, oral genealogies. You might wish to use this option if there is a potential for bias, as in, for example, an autobiography.
Unreliable	Unreliable evidence or estimated data.

Evidence

Direct	Direct evidence is evidence that seems to answer the research question all by itself.
Indirect	Indirect evidence is evidence that cannot on its own answer the research question, but which must be combined with other evidence to arrive at a conclusion.

Information

Primary	A source constitutes primary information if it is provided by someone who had firsthand knowledge of the matter in question - such as a witness to an event or a participant.
Secondary	A source constitutes secondary information if it is provided by someone who had secondhand knowledge of the matter in question (if say they heard about it from others), or had any other kind of more distant connection to the matter in question.

Source

Original	A source is original if it is in its original form.
Derivative	A source is derivative if it is a copy, or a summary, or some other kind of version which derives from the original, but which is not itself the original.