Evaluating Your Sources
As you gather sources for your research, you’ll need to know how to assess the validity and reliability of the materials you find.
Keep in mind that the sources you find have all been put out there by groups, organizations, corporations, or individuals who have some motivation for getting this information to you. To be a good researcher, you need to learn how to assess the materials you find and determine their reliability—before deciding if you want to use them and, if so, how you want to use them.
Whether you are examining material in books, journals, magazines, newspapers, or websites, you want to consider several issues before deciding if and how to use the material you have found.
You may have seen the commercial above making a point about how you have to be careful of what you find on the internet. This is true in life and in your efforts to find quality sources for academic papers.
The internet is particularly challenging because anyone can really post anything they want on the internet. At the same time, there are some really quality sources out there, such as online journals.
The important thing is to use skepticism, use the guidelines you have read about in this section of Research, and be sure to ask your professor if general web sources are even allowed. Sometimes, in an effort to have students steer clear of inaccurate information, professors will forbid general web sources for a paper, but this is not always the case. If you are allowed to go to the web to locate sources, just remember to check for suitability , credibility , and timeliness using the guidelines presented in this section of the Excelsior OWL.
Using the Evaluation Checklist will also give you some good guidelines to remember, no matter where you found your source.
Below is an interactive checklist you can use to evaluate your sources or to use as a guide.
CHECKPOINT
For the topics listed below, choose a source from the sample article listed above and check if the source meets the listed requirements in these five areas. CHECK ALL THAT APPLY.
- CREDIBILITY
Is information about the author’s qualifications, such as education or profession, available on the sources or through additional searching?
Does the source provide a reference lists or bibliography showing where the information contained within the source came from?
Can you find information about whether or not the publisher is reputable?
2. RELEVANCE AND CONTENT
Is the subject matter of the source related to your topic?
Are you able to distinguish between fact and opinion in the source?
3. INTENDED AUDIENCE
Do you have doubts if this source works well for your audience? Does it seem not to be targeting the right level?
Does this source work well for your audience? For example, if you are writing for a formal, academic audience, is the source a scholarly publication from a journal or a reputable book? If you are writing for the general public, is the source more popular in it?
4. DATE
Can you tell when this source was published or revised?
Based on the date, will the facts and opinions in this source provide you with current information?
5. PURPOSE
Overall, is this source suitable as a resource for your research purposes?
Is the information in this source biased or limited to one point of view?
LICENSES AND ATTRIBUTIONS
Excelsior Online Writing Lab (OWL). Located at: https://owl.excelsior.edu/ . This site is licensed under a https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ .