Evaluating Sources

CRAAP TEST

It can be tempting to use any source in your paper that seems to agree with your thesis, but remember that not all information is good information, especially in an online environment.  Developed by librarians at California State University-Chico (see below for the link), the CRAAP Test is a handy checklist to use when evaluating a web resource (or ANY resource).  The test provides a list of questions to ask yourself when deciding whether or not a source is reliable and credible enough to use in your academic research paper. CRAAP stands for Currency, Relevance, Authority, Accuracy, and Purpose.  For more information, please see below.

Something to keep in mind: the CRAAP test is only one method for evaluating content. There are other methods out there that may be more appropriate such as RADAR (Relevance, Authority, Date, Appearance, Reason for writing). However, since it was one of the first evaluations for online content, we'll be focusing on CRAAP for this page.