Evidence, and how much you need
What counts as evidence at this level
- Specific, checkable material. A date, a figure, a name, a piece of legislation, a quotation with its source, a physical feature of a place.
- A general statement is not evidence. Money came in slowly is a claim. £212 of a £600 target after four years is evidence for it.
- Evidence has to be attached to something. A fact that supports no part of your claim is a fact, not evidence.
- Attribute it. The council minute of 14 June 1938 records... — the source is part of the evidence, and it is what makes the claim checkable.
- A place is evidence if your topic is a place. The inscription, the materials, the position, the condition, and what is not on it.
How much, and where it has to be
- Achieved asks for supporting evidence; Merit for detailed; Excellence for comprehensive.
- The change from Achieved to Merit is specificity. Not more items — more precise ones. A figure instead of an adverb; a date instead of "later"; a named source instead of "sources say".
- The change from Merit to Excellence is distribution. Every part of your claim evidenced, from independent sources, so no single part rests on an assertion.
- Three or four specific items per section is a working target. Twelve items concentrated in one section and none in another fails Excellence however impressive the twelve.
- Check by part, not by total. Write your claim's parts in a list and put your evidence under them. The empty row is what to work on.
Getting specific evidence rather than general evidence
- Replace every quantity word with a number, or say you could not find one. Many, slowly, most, a lot, eventually. Each of these is a place where a figure belongs.
- Replace every vague time with a date. Later, soon after, in the following years.
- Name people and bodies. The council is better than the authorities; the council's meeting of 14 June 1938 is better again.
- Quote short and quote in your own sentence. Three to eight words, doing work inside a sentence you wrote.
- If a figure does not exist, say so. The fund's total was reported only twice, in 1935 and 1939 is itself specific, and better than a guess.
Using different kinds of evidence together
- Contemporary written — minutes, newspapers, letters, reports. Strong on what was decided and said; shaped by who was writing.
- Contemporary visual or physical — photographs, plans, the place itself. Strong on what things looked like and where they were; silent on why.
- Later scholarly — a historian's account. Strong on context and on what the records collectively show; not a witness.
- Later personal — recollections and oral history. Strong on meaning and experience; weak on sequence and detail.
- Use at least three kinds. Each fails differently, so a claim supported across kinds is much harder to overturn than one supported by three items of the same kind.
Referencing so the evidence can be checked
- Every piece of evidence names its source in the text, at the point of use. The council minute of 14 June 1938..., the district newspaper of 3 May 1937...
- A full reference list at the end, with enough that someone else could find each item — author or creator, title, date, publisher or archive, reference number or URL.
- Follow whatever referencing style your teacher specifies. The style does not matter; the checkability does.
- Reference as you write, not at the end. The most avoidable loss in an internal is a quotation whose source cannot be re-found.
Worked Example
Worked example
A student's claim for the Mangaroa Bridge memorial (invented) has three parts:
- Part 1: The fund raised money slowly and accounts for most of the delay.
- Part 2: A site dispute ran in parallel and was settled in 1938.
- Part 3: The two were separate, not one cause.
Their evidence list is: six newspaper reports about the fund, one council minute about the site, and a 1998 local history chapter.
Audit it.
Answer:
Step 1 — put the evidence under the parts.
- Part 1: six newspaper reports, plus the 1998 chapter. Heavily supported.
- Part 2: one council minute. Thinly supported.
- Part 3: nothing at all.
Step 2 — name the problem. The submission has eight items and the part that carries the whole argument has none. Part 3 is the claim that makes the explanation an explanation rather than a list of two causes — and a reader will notice that it is asserted.
Step 3 — work out what evidence Part 3 would need. To show the two causes were separate rather than one, the student needs something showing they operated independently:
- A date where one was active and the other was not. The 1935 fund correspondence discusses money and never mentions a site — which shows the site dispute had not yet begun while the fund was already four years old. That single fact evidences Part 3 directly.
- A date where they overlapped without interacting. If the fund kept collecting through the 1937–38 site argument, neither was waiting for the other.
- The order of resolution. The site was settled in 1938 and the fund reached target in 1939 — so neither can be the whole cause, since the delay outlasted the first and ended with the second.
Step 4 — fix the independence problem in Part 1. Six newspaper reports from one paper are one kind of source with one gatekeeper. The 1998 chapter may well be written from those same reports — worth checking its footnotes. One fund record or subscription list from the museum would be worth more than three further newspaper items.
Step 5 — fix Part 2. One minute is a fact, not a case. The 1937 editorial arguing for the other site, and anything in the museum's holdings about the domain, would turn a single record into an account of a dispute.
Step 6 — the revised target. Three or four items per part, drawn from at least three kinds of source, with the strongest single addition being the 1935 fund correspondence — because it is the one item that evidences Part 3, the part currently resting on nothing.