RootsMagic lets you apply a quality rating to each use of your citations based on the industry-standard Elizabeth Shown Mills, "Process Map for Evidence Analysis", Evidence Explained: Citing History Sources from Artifacts to Cyberspace (Baltimore, Maryland: Genealogy Publishing, 2007).

 

From her discussion, Sources give us information from which we select evidence for analysis. A sound conclusion may be considered Proof.

 

To enter your quality ratings

 

After careful analysis and evaluation of the associated source, you can enter a quality rating in each of three factors that best describes the results of your analysis.

 

You will see the 3 Quality options when you are editing a citation on the edit person form. Just click each item and select the appropriate value from the drop list that appears.

 

 

Source

•Original - This source is in its first recorded form

•Derivative - This source is extracted, transcribed or otherwise derived from the original

•Authored - This source is an historical narrative. Info comes from other materials, but the author's conclusions form a new creation.

•Don't know

 

Information

•Primary - This information was provided by someone with firsthand knowledge of the person or fact

•Secondary - This information was provided by someone with secondhand knowledge of the person or fact

•Undetermined - The source does not provide enough information to determine whether it is primary or secondary.

•Don't know

 

Evidence

•Direct - This source answers the research question by itself

•Indirect - This source is relevant, but needs additional information

•Negative - This source is missing information that it should contain

•Don't know

 

The quality is at the citation use level, since the same source (or even the same citation) can have a different quality depending on what it is used for. For example, a birth certificate could have a different quality depending on whether it was used for the person's birth, or used for the father's place of birth.