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Social Sciences School of Law

Possible sources of reliable information

When researching your topic, choose your sources of information carefully. Try to avoid opinion or comments picked from social media. Use verified research, reports, news stories published by regulated media organisations (such as the BBC, the Press Association), official statistics. Include links to these articles or reports so that your reader can see where the information or quotes in your story has come from.

Personal stories/anecdotes

It's fine to use your own first hand account, or accounts you gather by speaking to friends, family, teachers and people you already know. Personal accounts from strangers you don’t know online and can’t verify are a little tricky and should be avoided.

Online information/social media

It's easy to find information online, but think carefully about authorship and verification. Ask yourself:
  • Does this information have an author?
  • Is it connected to a legitimate news agency?
  • Has it been shared without a source?
  • Is this the full story, an edited version or a personal opinion? How does that influence the report's accuracy and intentions?

Below are some possible sources of reliable information. Remember you won’t have time to check everything, but there may be one or two sources that provide you with useful background and context you need for your writing.

Official sources of information

 

Topic specific sources

If you’re stuck, here are some subject specific help to get you started. You don’t need to read everything, these are just ideas and examples to get you going and inspire your own search for information. Remember at the heart of your work is a story you want to tell, these resources are just to back up your work.

Mental Health

Privatisation in the NHS

There are quite a few campaigns. Some will have published research, firsthand accounts, articles on this subject. Always quote the campaign organisation if you use any of their material.

Windrush

Street Harassment

.

Social pressures on women

Prisons/prison reform

Charities, NGOs publishing reports and stats on prison populations and conditions:

Impact of austerity on young people

Identity and nationalism

Class inequality/discrimination/ labour rights/single mothers

Social mobility/inequality in education

LGBTQI+ homelessness

Homelessness

Autism

  • The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is a short funny book about a clever teenager navigating family drama. It is never mentioned that Christopher is autistic or on the autism spectrum, just that he has “Behavioural Problems”, but at the time of publication in 2003 he was widely considered to have Asperger’s syndrome. There has been much criticism of the book in recent years (author sort of responds here). There are massively contrasting views from people who read the book - some autistic people and their families loves it, others hate it and consider it ableist - a positive review and a negative review
  • The National Autistic Society published their list of Dos and Don’ts for journalists and writers - you might find it useful to have a read. For example, ask people about their preferences and own experience, and unless they tell you otherwise, avoid the term "person with autism" and instead say "autistic person" https://www.autism.org.uk/what-we-do/help-and-support/how-to-talk-about-autism
  • Autistic writer Cassie Joseph on her dos and don’ts. She says: “Writing autistic characters may seem like a daunting task; but, ultimately, you just want to approach it the way you would approach writing any other character: with empathy, kindness, and a commitment to writing them well. If you do that, then you’ll get pretty far.”
  • Here is a long excerpt from Songs of the Gorilla Nation: My Journey Through Autism. A first person account of obtaining a diagnosis as an adult and how having undiagnosed autism impacted her. https://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/21/books/chapters/songs-of-the-gorilla-nation.html

  • A writer on the disability in kid lit website (focuses on portrayals of disability in young people’s literature) recommends A Real Boy, about an 11 year old boy with autism.

  • I have autism and the lack of authentic voices in books angers me - Sara Barrett discusses the portrayal of autistic characters, and praises Corrine Duyvis' On The Edge of Gone

    • And the most beautiful thing about the book is that Denise is a normal girl. She just has ticks. She just has a few things that set her apart. Because in the end, we are normal. We may seem different from everyone else, but we aren’t so different really. We feel a lot of the same things as everyone else. We feel scared. We feel lonely. We feel afraid. And we need more writers like Corinne Duyvis to give us books we can relate to for once.

  • 'You don't look autistic': on stereotypes and late diagnosis - This Lacuna writer combines their personal story with research.
  • Remember, your piece is a your own personal response to "what makes you angry". This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t attempt writing on autism for Writing Wrongs! Or that it has to be a negative or dark writing project. It could be that you’ve noticed that your unique experience of autism is something you rarely see discussed or portrayed, and that’s what you want to focus on, so keep it original.

 

 Further food for thought:

Interview with Mark Haddon: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/feb/02/fiction.markhaddon

 Excerpt: 

Question: How much research did you do before writing The Curious Incident..., and was it difficult?

Mark Haddon: I did no specific research at all. Many years ago I worked with people with a variety of disabilities (all of them more seriously disabled than Christopher), so I feel comfortable writing about the subject and have what you might call an interested layperson's knowledge of autism and Asperger's. Beyond that I reasoned (rightly, I think, in retrospect) that the novel would work best if I simply tried to make Christopher seem like a believable human being, rather than trying to make him medically 'correct'. In short, if I treated him like any other character and didn't make him a special case