Perspectives, intent and motivation
The five concepts, and why they matter more than the topic
- The standard names five concepts, and every Question Two ever set has been built from one of them: perspectives; reliability and bias; continuity and change; intent and motivation; cause and effect.
- The topic changes every year. The concepts do not. This is the closest thing to a syllabus this standard has.
- Two of the five are covered here — perspectives, and intent and motivation — because they are the two most often confused with each other.
Perspective is not the same as opinion
- A perspective is a point of view held for reasons that made sense from where the person stood. It includes their attitudes, beliefs, the reasons behind them, and the actions that followed.
- An opinion is just the conclusion. He was against it is an opinion. He was against it because he was a ratepayer facing a rates rise and believed councils should be run by men with commercial experience is a perspective.
- Explaining a perspective is not endorsing it. You are reconstructing why a position looked reasonable to the person holding it, using the information and assumptions available to them at the time.
- Judging a past perspective by today's standards ends the analysis instead of doing it. Saying an 1906 letter-writer was wrong is easy and earns nothing. Saying what he thought he was protecting, and what evidence he had, is history.
- Perspectives come in groups as often as in individuals. Ratepayers, councillors, the newspaper's editorial line, women's organisations — the sources usually give you a group's position through one person's words.
How to pull a perspective out of a source
- Find the position. What does this person want to happen or not happen?
- Find the reason given. What justification do they state?
- Find the reason not given. What interest do they have that the source does not mention? This is where Excellence lives.
- Find the action. What did they do about it — vote, write, campaign, stay silent? A perspective backed by an action is far better evidenced than one backed by a sentence.
- Name the perspective in your own words before quoting. The council's majority held that... then the quote. Never the reverse.
Intent and motivation — the concept Question Three is usually built on
- Intent is what the source was made to do. Record, persuade, sell, entertain, defend, instruct.
- Motivation is why its creator wanted that. Their interest, their job, their reputation, their politics.
- They are different questions and both are asked. A newspaper's intent in printing a council report is to inform readers; its motivation may include selling papers and keeping the council's advertising business.
- Intent is usually visible in the form of the source. A handbill is shaped to persuade; a minute book is shaped to record; a photograph published in a newspaper was chosen from many.
- Motivation is usually visible in the attribution line. Who made it, and what did their position give them a stake in?
- Every judgement about intent must change something. This source was made to persuade is only worth marks when followed by so it is strong evidence of what its authors thought would work, and weak evidence that it worked.
Change and continuity, which Question Two loves
- Change and continuity are one concept, not two, and papers ask for both: change or continuity, similar and / or different.
- The 2025 report singles this out: Merit candidates discussed both change and continuity. Candidates who discussed only change had answered half the question.
- To show change you need two moments and a measurable difference between them. Two sources from different dates, and something specific that differs.
- To show continuity you need the same two moments and something that did not move — a phrase repeated, an argument still being made, a number that did not shift.
- The strongest answers find both in the same evidence. An argument being made in 1906 and still being made in 1930 is continuity; the fact that it now has to be made against a sitting woman councillor is change.
Worked Example
Worked example
Source D (invented) is a letter to the editor of the Waipuna Herald, April 1906, signed "A Ratepayer of Twenty Years". It argues that borough business is "the management of drains, contracts and loans", and that the council should be filled by "men who have met a payroll".
Identify the perspective, the intent and the motivation, and say what the source is good evidence for.
Answer:
Step 1 — the perspective, stated in my own words first. The writer holds that council membership should follow from commercial experience rather than from citizenship. His stated reason is the nature of the work: drains, contracts and loans are technical and financial matters.
Notice what that argument does not say. It never claims women are incapable in general, and it never appeals to the law. It is an argument about qualification, not about rights — which means its author expected a qualification argument to be more persuasive in Waipuna than an outright one.
Step 2 — the intent. A letter to the editor is written to be published and to persuade. It is shaped for an audience of ratepayers, and it selects the strongest available ground.
Step 3 — the motivation. The signature is the evidence: "A Ratepayer of Twenty Years" claims standing from having paid rates, not from office or expertise. The writer has a direct financial interest in who controls borough spending, and chooses to foreground that interest rather than hide it.
Step 4 — say what it is good and bad evidence for, because this is what earns the mark.
- Good evidence for: what arguments were considered respectable and publishable in Waipuna in 1906, and how quickly the dispute moved from the council chamber into public print — the council voted in March, this appeared in April.
- Poor evidence for: how many ratepayers agreed. Letter-writers are self-selecting — more confident and more literate than the average voter — so one letter shows an argument existed, not that it was widespread.
The question it raises: did the Herald print letters on the other side? If it did not, the silence may be the editor's rather than the town's, and the booklet cannot tell us which.