Are your Research Findings Correct?

Have you ever heard of the Genalogical Proof Standard? Up until this week I hadn’t. As I have been learning how to do family history work, I’ve asked myself one question over and over again. My question is “Am I sure I am right?” Just the other week I was working on my mother’s line of ancestors. I was working on tasks and doing my best to determine whether or not my ancestor's name matched the ancestor I was comparing it to. I looked at all the information I was given and determined it was indeed correct. In doing so, I was able to find out that this particular ancestor had children that had not been written down yet. I was so excited! But at the same time, I had that nagging question in the back of my mind. “Am I sure I am right?”

I, of course, asked for more experienced eyes to double-check my work. But as I did this, I thought to myself, I want to become confident in my work. I want to be able to know that I have answered correctly based upon the knowledge and information I have been given.

There’s nothing wrong with asking someone else that has more experience than you to check your work, but I just wanted to be more confident about my decisions. How and when was I going to get there? In the family history course I’m taking, it talks about the Genealogical Proof Standard. It was like a light bulb went off in my head while reading about this. I had finally found a guide to follow when doing family history work. This guide isn’t just for professionals either. It's for everyone involved in this great work. Volunteers, professionals, and those working on their own family lines. I'm going to list below how you can also follow the Genealogical Proof Standard while doing your own family history work. Hopefully, this will help you just as much as it helps me.

There are five steps posted below to follow when wanting to apply the Genealogical Proof Standard to your own individual findings.

1. Conduct extensive research. - Use any records that are relevant to your search. There are so many resources out there readily available for us to turn to.

2. Use correct and clear source citations. –It helps to be able to cite your sources correctly should you be asked to share where you got your information. The Chicago Manual of Style is a great style guide to follow for this.

3. Analyze and correlate. – Make sure that the information or evidence you find is credible. From there you can compare all the information and evidence you have together to prove you found the correct answer.

4. Resolve conflicting evidence. – There are instances where you have information that all points to one answer, but then find another piece of evidence that points to another answer. When this happens, you must determine why that piece of evidence is credible or not credible. You can determine this by asking if the source of the information is credible? You should also look at who wrote the document. Are they credible?

5. Write an accurate conclusion based on clear evidence. -Here you will prove through the evidence and information you gathered that you are correct.