Being able to understand, analyse and evaluate ‘political information’, also known as sources, is crucial to success at A-level politics and is worth either 24% (Edexcel) or 32% (AQA) of your overall mark (Tables 1 and 2). The source will either be a few paragraphs of text, or text combined with data such as a table of statistics or a pie chart, from which you have to identify arguments and opinions to form the basis of your answer.
When reading the source, you should be trying to identify two different things — you are looking for the individual arguments which have been advanced, as well as the overarching opinions on how the question could be answered. It is important that you give yourself plenty of time to read the source in the exam as you will only be credited for analysis and evaluation that is relevant to the source. It is useful to have a couple of different coloured highlighters handy for source work — one to highlight arguments, one to highlight opinions.
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