How to do history research?

This article is not intended for academic research. Instead, it is aim at ordinary readers who want to evaluate the reliability of historical claim.

To begin, we can look at the general context. Any relevant secondary sources will do at this stage. The information in these sources is not necessarily accurate. but they can help us build the necessary knowledge we need, including an understanding of the historical context, timeline, and established interpretations. It is also helpful to identify areas of contention among different source.

Next, we can try to track down as many primary sources as possible, including written records (such letters, diaries, goverment documents etc), oral histories, artifacts and other form s of material culture.

Then comes one of the most important steps: performing a “CRAAP” test.
C stand for currency, which refers to how recent or old the infomation is.
R stand for relevance, which asks whether the information is relevant to the historical claim.
The first A stand for authority, which concerns who created or published the source and what their professional background is.
The second A stand for accuracy. In this regard, it is helpful to compare multiple sources that describe the same event. For example, if one source describes a battle in one way while ten others describe it differently, the outlier deserves closer scrutiny.
P stand for purpose, which means examining why the source was created. Was it intended to educate, sell something, persuade readers, or express a personal bias?

After working through these steps, we may arrive at a more reliable understanding of the past. However, we should always bear in mind that good researchers actively look for evidence that contradicts their hypotheses. We should not focus solely on a few powerful individuals. We should also consider the significant influence of social movements, economic forces, geography, and ordinary people.