To find the original source, work backwards: ask of each page “where did you get this?” until you reach the people or organisation that first collected or said it. In Global Perspectives this matters whenever a statistic, quote or strong claim shows up in more than one place.
The skill appears in research tasks across sources and credibility and supports every later step of evaluating evidence. All sources and figures in the example below are invented for practice.
Why is a repeated claim not the same as a strong claim?
Repetition can look like agreement between independent sources. Often it is one source copied many times, and each copy may drop a detail on the way.
Think of a message passed along a line of people. By the end, the wording has shifted even though nobody lied.
How to trace a claim, step by step
- Write the claim exactly as you first met it, including numbers and wording.
- Look for a citation or link in the page. Note who is named and what is named: a person, a report, a survey, a press release.
- Open the next source and repeat. Keep a short list of every step.
- Stop at the origin: the report, dataset, interview or speech where the information was first produced.
- Compare the original wording with the version you started with. Note anything added, dropped or rounded.
Worked example (invented sources)
You read in a blog post: “70% of teenagers in Lakeside sleep fewer than six hours a night.”
Step 1, record the claim. The blog post (Blog C) gives no link, but says “according to a news report”.
Step 2, find the news report. A search leads to a local news site (News B). It says “a survey by the Lakeside Youth Council found that 70% of teenagers sleep fewer than six hours.”
Step 3, find the survey. News B links to a page by the Lakeside Youth Council (Source A). The page describes a short questionnaire given to 120 students at two schools in one month.
Step 4, compare wording. Source A says: “70% of the 120 students who answered reported sleeping fewer than six hours on school nights.” Blog C says all teenagers in Lakeside. News B says teenagers, without the school-night detail.
Step 5, conclude. The original is Source A. It supports a claim about 120 students at two schools on school nights, not about all teenagers.
A fair note in your research log would read: “Original: Lakeside Youth Council questionnaire (invented). Claim as first reported is wider than what the survey measured.”
The mistake to watch for
A common slip is to stop at the page that sounds most official or has the most detail.
Mistaken approach: the student cites News B because it names a survey and looks professional.
News B is a report about a source. It is useful as a pointer, but it is not where the data came from.
The correction is to cite the original where you can, and to say plainly when you only reached a secondary report. If you used News B to find Source A, both can appear in your record, with each role labelled.
Check yourself
1. Post X says “A study proves that cats lower stress.” Post X links to Post Y, which links to Post Z, which links to a university press release. Which one do you try to read first, and why?
Show answer
The press release, because it is the closest to where the finding came from. Posts X, Y and Z are chain links that may have changed the wording. You would still check whether the press release itself points to a full study.
2. Three websites quote the same figure: “40% of shops closed.” All three cite “industry experts”. Do you have three pieces of evidence?
Show answer
No. Without named origins you cannot show the sites are independent. Treat it as one unverified claim until you find who the “industry experts” were and what they measured.
3. Your trail ends at a screenshot with no author or date. What should your research note say?
Show answer
Record the claim as unverified, state the furthest source reached (the screenshot), and list what you tried, such as reverse searches or looking for a matching report. Do not present the claim as fact.
Where this leads next
Once you can find the origin, ask who produced it and whether they know the topic. That is the focus of separating source expertise from agreement with its conclusion. Then test the whole module with the sources and credibility practice set.
Some students follow each step in class but find it hard to organise their own research trails. A teacher in online one-to-one Global Perspectives tuition can work through original, non-assessed examples with you while the research and report stay your own.