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Introduction | Questions
to Ask Yourself | Selected Website Evaluation
Sources
Introduction
Your job in doing research is not simply finding information,
it's finding good information. What constitutes as "good"
is of course up to you. But to make this judgment you should
ask yourself a series of questions, and you should do this when
evaluating any piece of information, whether it is from a book
or an article or information off the Web.
Questions to Ask Yourself
Audience | Authority
| Bias | Credibility
| Factual
| Up to Date | Appearance?
Audience
Who is the intended audience of the information? The general
public, a more educated or attuned segment of the general public,
or specialists in the field?
For books, read the introduction or preface. Sometimes this
can be ascertained by the publisher, if it is a mainstream one
or one that specializes in only certain types of books. (Virtually
every publisher has a website, where they will explain their
mission and how to submit a manuscript, etc.)
Articles are usually judged by the content of the article itself
or the reputation of the periodical. Note whether the periodical
is scholarly or not.
For websites, you will just have the website itself to judge.
If there is lots of jargon with no explanation, then you are
not the target audience. But then the more research you do on
the subject, the more you will be "in the know" and
your expectations will change.
Authority
Who wrote the information? Why did they write it? What
are their credentials? How many other things have they
written? Who published/sponsored it? What's the criteria
for them publishing/sponsoring a work?
For books, it better by pretty obvious what the name of the
author is. Why they wrote it could be trickier, since they may
or may not include intent in their preface or introduction.
There is usually a short biography either in the beginning or
the end of the book, though sometimes this information is just
in the book jacket. You can consult some biographical reference
sources if you want to learn more about the author, such as
Contemporary Authors or The Writers Directory.
To find out what else the author has published, search
WorldCat, one of the FirstSearch databases. To find out
more about the publisher, look for their website, since virtually
all publishers have a web presence. They usually include what
kind of titles they publish and how to submit a manuscript.
Scholarly articles always list the authors, and most magazines
and newspapers offer bylines, with a few noteworthy exceptions
such as The Economist. Why they wrote it could be trickier,
since they may or may not include intent in the introduction,
though if it is a scholarly article, they should have a research
statement. For scholarly articles, they will include the institution
the author works for, and for recent articles they usually include
an e-mail address for contact information. Magazines and
newspapers usually just list the name, unless the author doesn't
work for them, e.g. a guest editorial. Finding biographical
information on the individual author would be tricky. Usually
you would judge the authority of the magazine or newspaper,
rather than the author.
Finding out what else the author has published would be much
easier for scholarly journal authors than magazine and newspaper
authors, because the subject-specific databases tend to have
coverage back to the 1960s. For a literary theorist, use MLA,
for a psychologist, use PsycINFO, etc. (You would have to consult
some print indexes to get that much coverage of someone who
wrote for Time or Newsweek.) To find out more
about the periodical, look in the beginning or the back for
a list of editors, submission requirements, etc., or check their
website.
Hopefully the website will have the name of the author and
contact information. They may or may not have biographical information
on the site. If there is no author, then hopefully it is clearly
sponsored by an organization, and bylines are not as important.
Intent will have to be judged by the content. But since they
are putting this information up for free, there has got to be
a reason for them doing it. Organizations usually have agendas,
viewpoints, or information to get across to the public. Academics
may write webpages to aid their students, etc. Think about why
did the writer spend this much time putting the website together.
What is in it for them? In general, if the website wants to
be taken seriously, it will list credentials for the author
or information about the organization. If you cannot find who
wrote/sponsored it, then you should most likely dismiss the
site.
Bias
Is the information presented objectively? Are the opinions
balanced, or does the author have an agenda?
Some works are clearly more biased than others. But the biases
are not always obvious. It may be in omitting one or another
side that the author expresses biases. If the author wants to
at least have the air of being objective, then it should acknowledge
different viewpoints. But just because there is an agenda to
the piece does not mean you should dismiss it. It will simply
require finding other sources to discuss other sides to the
issue.
Credibility
Does the information seem credible? Does the author give
sources or suggestions for further reading for the information?
How comprehensive is the source list? What type of sources did
the author use? If some of the other sources are websites, do
the links work?
Credibility will have to be judged by what you find out in
all your research. But definitely note the sources and suggestions
for further reading in the scholarly pieces you find. If all
the sources are one type (say non-scholarly for a supposed scholarly
piece) or rather old, this may be important.
Links on a website are very easy to check out, given the medium. But
another advantage to websites is that you can easily see who
else links to a particular site. If lots of other reputable
sites have recommended your site via offering a link to it,
that should bode well. You can check this in Google,
Yahoo!, and AltaVista,
by typing link:http://www.whatever.com in the search
box.
Factual
If facts or statistics are presented, are they accurate?
Try verifying the facts with another source. If a particular
statistic is important to your hypothesis, it would be worth
verifying. Some facts are pretty easy to verify with online
sources, such as population, capitals, etc. Unfortunately a
lot of times in non-scholarly sources, they do not give complete
citations of where they got their information. Instead they
say "a report issued by such and such agency today stated..."
Up to Date
Is the information current?
Whether it is important that the information is current depends
on the issue. Certainly for some disciplines it is, and sometimes
your instructors will place date limits on your sources. But
just because the information is dated doesn't necessarily mean
it is not valuable. In history and literature, sometimes the
best book on a subject is one that 30 years old. Nevertheless,
you should always note the date of the information and the dates
of the references.
On websites, it is common practice to put a "last updated"
date stamp, but not everyone does, making it rather hard to
judge the currency of the information. Links that no longer
work may be a sign of abandonment of the website by the author.
Appearance?
Another category that comes up a lot when evaluating websites
is appearance. How does the website look, can you navigate it
easily, are there any typos, etc. How crucial is the look or
navigation to judging the content of a site? One would question
a site with glaring typos or grammatical errors, as this is
a sign that the author did not put that much thought into it.
But not everyone has a graphical artist's sense of style, and
there are plenty of very useful websites out there that are
a pain to navigate.
In terms of periodicals, appearance is how one first judges
what kind of periodical it is. A popular magazine looks very
different compared to a scholarly journal -- the magazine is
eye-catching, glossy, and usually chocked full of ads. Journals
are dull, boring, have few to no pictures, and usually
have few ads if any. One of the main problems with electronic
articles is that you lose the context of the periodical as a
whole. Not seeing where the article came from makes it more
difficult to judge sometimes.
Judging books by their cover is something everyone does. Why
else would publishers spend so much money on designing the covers?
(Of course in academic libraries, where we almost always remove
the dust jackets, it is a moot point.) Not that you can really
judge much of the overall use of a book by appearance. Mainstream
and university presses both have glossy book jackets and nice
fonts. And some books that look downright awful, for instance
a book that looks like a bad photocopy of a work, may in fact
be a reprint of a PhD dissertation from UMI, and it is very
scholarly.
Selected Website Evaluation Sources
Selected by UIS Brookens Library & Capital Scholars Faculty.
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