How to determine credible sources

Evaluating sources

Once you have a bunch of sources, it is necessary to make sure they are good sources to use in your assignment. A gold standard approach, often used in high schools, colleges and universities is the CRAP (a.k.a CRAAP) test. Each letter in the word CRAAP stands for a concept you should be looking for in your source. By applying the CRAAP test to your source, you can check that the information is up-to-date, related to your topic, written by someone knowledgeable on the topic and as free of bias as possible.

• Currency: When was this information shared?
• Relevance: How does the information fit your topic?
• Authority: Who has written this information and are they credible?
• Accuracy: How correct is this information?
• Purpose: Why was this information shared by the publisher? What’s the goal?

How to determine the age of sources, including on-line sources

https://apus.libanswers.com/faq/170563

While in some fields of study (like history), currency may not be the most important issue, in others (like science and technology), it’s a vital consideration.  Older web pages, articles or book are not necessarily bad, but may be missing more current information or viewpoints.  Use your judgment to decide whether or not a source is current enough for your needs.

When you’re searching library resources (articles and ebooks, for example), it’s easy to sort your results by date as needed.  See how here.

Out on the open web, however, date information can be harder to find. 

• If you’re looking at a single page within a website, the publication or last updated date may be near the page title (toward the top of the page) or at the very bottom of the page.  It will usually include a day, month and year.   (When you cite a web article or specific web page, this is the date you’ll need.)  
• The copyright date for the entire website (usually found in the site’s footer, often seen at the bottom of all pages within that site’s domain) will be listed as a year only, and is not the same as the publication date for any given page on the site.  But, it is a clue as to whether a site is actively maintained:  if the copyright date is several years ago and you can’t find a publication/last updated date, be on the lookout for outdated information.
  • Look for the word “copyright” or the copyright symbol: © . 
  • If a date range is listed, use the most recent year. 
• When no publication dates are listed, keep an eye out for:
• Many broken links.  These are a sign that no one is actively maintaining a page’s content.
• No recent citations.  Look within the text for dates, or scan the citation/references list (if available).  If all of the sources that the article mentions or cites are several years old, then the article itself was probably published a few years ago, too.  Even if it was published more recently, if it only used older sources, it’s probably not terribly current.
• Failure to mention major recent events or discoveries related to the subject matter.   A web page related to airline security that doesn’t at least mention the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, for example, may be older than 15 years.

How to determine the suitability of sources for the task and context, including organisational context

Evaluating Information Sources

As a student, you will be gathering information from a variety of types of sources for your research projects including books, newspaper articles, magazine articles, specialized databases, and websites. As you examine each source, it is important to evaluate each source to determine the quality of the information provided within it. Common evaluation criteria include: purpose and intended audience, authority and credibility, accuracy and reliability, currency and timeliness, and objectivity or bias. Each of these criteria will be explained in more detail below.

Purpose and intended audience

• What is the purpose of the source? For example:
  • To provide information (e.g., newspaper articles)
  • To persuade or advocate (e.g., editorials or opinion pieces)
  • To entertain (e.g., a viral video)
  • To sell a product or service (e.g., advertising or marketing materials on a company website)
• Who is the intended audience? For example:
  • Scholars and academic researchers with specialized knowledge
  • The general public (without specialized knowledge)
  • Students in high school, college or university (e.g., textbooks for students learning a new subject).

Authority and credibility

• Who is the author?
  • Is it a person?
  • Is it an organization such as a government agency, nonprofit organization, or a corporation?
• What are the qualifications of the author?
  • What is the author’s occupation, experience, or educational background?
  • Does the author have any subject matter expertise?
  • Is the author affiliated with an organization such as a university, government agency, nonprofit organization, or a corporation?
• Who is the publisher?
  • For books, is it a university press or a commercial publisher? These types of publishers use editors in order to ensure a quality publication.
  • For journals or magazines, can you tell if it is popular or scholarly in nature? See: Peer-reviewed, popular magazine, or journal?
  • For websites, is it an organizational website, or a personal blog?

Accuracy and reliability

• Is the information well researched?
  • Are there references (e.g., citations, footnotes, or a bibliography) to sources that will provide evidence for the claims made?
  • If the source includes facts or statistical data, can this information be verified in another source?
  • If the data was gathered using original research (such as polling or surveys), what was the method of data collection? Has the author disclosed the validity or reliability of the data?

Currency and timeliness

• When was the information published?
  • For books and articles – you should be able to easily verify the publication date.
  • For websites, try to determine the date the web page was created or updated
• Is current information required? If not, then accurate, yet historical, information may still be acceptable.

Objectivity or bias

• Does the source contain opinions or facts?
• Is the information presented in the source objective (unbiased) or subjective (biased)?
• Does the information promote a political, religious, or social agenda?
• Is advertising content (usually found in business magazines or newspapers) clearly labelled?

In Summary

• Does the source provide you with high-quality information? Is the information useful in answering your questions and meeting your information need?

How to distinguish between relevant and irrelevant information

Distinguish between relevant and irrelevant evidence