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Welcome to Lesson 4!
Welcome to Lesson 4!
This lesson is only one page, but it's kind of a long page. It'll probably take you about 25 to 45 minutes to read through this lesson, but how long it'll take really depends on how fast you read and how much of the material is new to you. To get to the next lesson, use the navigational links in the vertical black bar on the left, or use the link at the bottom of this page. If you are taking the tests associated with the lessons in this tutorial, then when you are ready to take a test, you'll need to navigate to the page that has LINKS TO ALL TESTS.
And now, the author would like to tell you about three things she is really eager for you to take away from this lesson:
Judging the credibility/quality of a source is extremely complex and it's also hard to teach.
As a novice researcher, you can assume that all scholarly sources are credible.
This page will explain other evidence you can look for when trying to establish the credibility of a source.
Now, let's get started!
Now, let's get started!
When seeking information, how important is quality anyway? Well, it really depends. In fact, it depends on lots of factors including:
Why do you need the information?
How are you using the information?
How important is accuracy?
Judging the quality of the source - meaning its accuracy and trustworthiness, or in other words, its credibility - really matters in some circumstances, but may be less important in other circumstances.
When does quality matter?
When does quality matter?
First, let's look at when it doesn't really matter. Suppose you were researching how TV advertising of household cleaning products has changed over time. You'd probably be examining the ads themselves as sources, right?
Maybe you'd look at the strategies used to manipulate consumers into a buying a new cleaning product, or how genders have been depicted in the ads over time.
But, the claims made about the product in the ad – and whether those claims are accurate and reliable – don't matter for your purposes. For example, if the manufacturer says that the cleaning product is the safest and most effective and cheapest and easiest to use and also smells really, really good – it doesn't matter if that's actually true or not for what you are studying.
In other cases, accuracy and reliability do matter a lot. When you need to make a decision, build an argument, make a case, etc. it's critical to gather and assimilate reliable facts.
An easy example to point to is making medical decisions; these sorts of decisions require that you gather reliable facts in order to make the best health care choice.
So, in circumstances where quality DOES matter, what is the best way to judge it?
So, in circumstances where quality DOES matter, what is the best way to judge it?
As you learned in the last lesson, the best way to judge the quality/credibility of a source is to thoroughly read it and carefully evaluate the validity of the evidence, arguments, and conclusions, as well as consult the opinions of other experts. Oh, and check the quality and appropriate use of references cited in the source. You also learned that most of us don't have time to do all these things! That means we need a more realistic way to judge the merits of the sources we use. However, so far nobody has figured out a foolproof method for doing this.
Several attempts have been made to create checklists of characteristics to look for, or a list of steps to follow, as you see in the examples to the right (CRAAP, RADAR, SIFT). But none of these checklists work perfectly in all situations, and sometimes these lists can be downright misleading. These lists can also be unrealistically time-consuming to work through.
CRAAP
Currency
Relevance
Authority
Accuracy
Purpose
RADAR
Rationale
Authority
Date
Accuracy
Relevance
SIFT
Stop
Investigate the source
Find better coverage
Trace the original context
The fact is that judging credibility is a complex and nuanced process that involves taking in all sorts of evidence and weighing it. The evidence you take in and weigh will depend on your previous knowledge and experience, the amount of time you have, and how important it is to make a sound judgement. The table below shows just some of the factors that might come into play when making credibility judgements. Notice that checklists like CRAAP, RADAR, and SIFT don't even begin to capture this complexity.
Even though judging quality/credibility is really complex (as evidenced by the table above!) we've got to start somewhere. So, below we'll look at some questions you can ask that'll help you judge the merits of different sources. Keep in mind, these questions don't represent a checklist for establishing credibility. Rather, use these questions to increase your awareness of qualities that indicate credibility. But when making quality/credibility judgements about a source, also use your common sense and intuition!
–Is the source scholarly?
–Is the source scholarly?
Remember how in Lesson 2 and Lesson 3 you learned skills for recognizing and distinguishing different types of sources and their qualities? This is where those skills will pay off! If you're able to determine that a source is scholarly, then it's usually safe to assume it's credible and high-quality. That's because of the qualities scholarly sources have, which you read about in the previous lesson. For example, they are peer-reviewed and/or editorially reviewed by experts to help ensure the accuracy of their contents. Plus, the authors themselves are experts in their field, their intent is to inform, and they provide their readers with explanations and evidence. These are all qualities that boost our confidence that scholarly sources are reliable and accurate, and thus credible!
So, it's fine for novice researchers (like you) to think of scholarly sources as a type, or subset, of credible sources, and to assume that the information contained in scholarly sources is credible and high-quality.
That means that if you're able to identify that a source is a journal article, conference paper, or scholarly book (all of which are scholarly sources) then you can assume the source is credible.
Caveat: While it's ok for novice researchers (like you) to assume that information published in scholarly or peer-reviewed sources (like journal articles and conference papers) is high-quality, as you become more of an expert in a discipline, you'll gain skills for scrutinizing the quality of scholarly sources with a more critical eye. Just like you'd trust your doctor (who is an expert) most of the time but you'd get a second opinion if a diagnoses didn't feel right to you, you'd scrutinize a scholarly or peer-reviewed source more carefully if you read something that didn't sound right.
– Or, is the source popular?
– Or, is the source popular?
If you are consulting a source that you know is popular rather than a scholarly, you need to more careful assessing its credibility. While some popular sources are credible, not all are, as you can see in the Venn diagram to the left. Also, notice from that diagram that there are no popular sources that we'd consider to be scholarly. The audiences are completely different, which is why there is no overlap. In fact, sometimes popular sources are referred to as non-scholarly sources.
But, let's go back to the fact that some popular sources can be credible. Many people would agree that the examples shown below (the magazines The Economist and Scientific American, as well as NASA's website) are good examples of sources that are both popular and credible.
QUESTION 1. Some, but not all, popular sources have the quality of being:
A. credible
B. spreadable
C. intestinal
D. scholarly
(Answer at bottom of page.)Of course, not all popular sources are credible. For example, lots of magazines offer pretty frivolous content that's designed to entertain, shock, or promote products to buy – and a lot of that content isn't particularly credible.
As for newspapers, most city-based newspapers report on news events fairly accurately because if they don't, they might damage their reputation and lose subscribers. So, if you're able to recognize that the source in front of you is an article from a city paper like the New York Times, Philadelphia Enquirer, Washington Post, L.A. Times, etc., or from another well-known newspaper like the Wall Street Journal, and the article is reporting on events that have happened (rather than being an editorial or an opinion), it's fairly likely to be decent quality.
However, be more careful assessing news about highly politicized topics as it is more likely to be biased. Also, keep in mind that some newspapers (like the Weekly World News shown to the right) are really gossipy and sensationalized and not even remotely credible.
Websites are even more variable in quality and credibility, so be careful. To increase your chances of gathering information from high-quality websites, practice CLICK RESTRAINT before choosing an internet result to explore. What does that mean? Well, if you've run a Google search to find information about something, then scan over your entire first page of results and look at the website names and URLs to assess which results are coming from reputable organizations, institutions, or companies. Furthermore, if you can tell what sort of source a result represents (such as a website, journal article, magazine article, etc.) that can help you choose the best result to click on. This is how experts search Google in order to save time.
You might be thinking "How can this possibly save time?" Well, once you click a result and land on a website, you're committing time to investigating that site further. If it turns out to be a dud, you'll have to go back to your results and try again. That wastes time. However, it saves time to scan over your results before choosing which to click, because then you can make an educated guess about which result is likely to be the most promising. Chances are higher that you'll land on the best result with one click. See?
QUESTION 2. When looking at your Google results, practicing click restraint saves time because you are more likely to choose the best, most relevant result with your first click, rather than needing to explore multiple results.
true
false
To sum up, if you are looking for high quality, credible content in popular sources like newspaper articles, magazine articles, or websites, then take more time assessing the source than you would with scholarly sources. The tips that follow will help you make calculated bets on the quality/credibility of different sources, but don't forget you can also ask for advice from your instructor or from a librarian.
–Does the source and/or its publisher have a good reputation for being credible?
–Does the source and/or its publisher have a good reputation for being credible?
As you gain experience as a researcher, you may start to recognize the names of certain sources with longstanding reputations for being credible such as:
The Norton Anthology of English Literature
The Merk Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy
New Dictionary of the History of Ideas
CIA World Factbook
You can also look over a source to find the name of the publisher who produced it, as you might recognize them and know they have a good reputation for consistently producing credible sources.
For example, if the source is an article from the New York Times, you might already know that this newspaper has been around a long time and is well-respected, thus giving it credibility. So, that's a start.
Recognizing reputable publishers is super easy for experienced researchers because their brains are chock-full of the names of publishers with reputations for publishing credible sources.
QUESTION 3. Experienced researchers, like professors and librarians, can often identify credible sources very quickly by recognizing the publisher of the source (and knowing that publisher has a good reputation). In fact, it is so second-nature that they tend to forget how challenging it is for those with less experience to evaluate what's credible and what's not.
true
false
(Answer at bottom of page.)
–Does the content in the source stand up to background-checking?
–Does the content in the source stand up to background-checking?
Another technique for determining whether a source is credible is to do background checking on it. Background checking can take several different forms:
Look up the source on the internet to see what others are saying about it. For example, you could try looking up the name of a magazine, journal, newspaper, or book in Wikipedia to see if there's any information about it. You can also use Wikipedia to look up the name of the publisher of the source to see what information you can find about that publisher.
2. If the source is a book, you could look for reviews of it using Google. Just enter the book's title and the word reviews.
3. Find corroborating information. Suppose a friend told you that all bats are blind, and you weren't sure if this was true so you decided to look for corroborating information. A quick Google search reveals lots of results saying just the opposite: that bats are not blind. It seems, then, that your friend is not a credible source of information on bats.
Or, suppose you were reading some news about an event that happened but you were suspicious of its accuracy. You could look up the news event in a variety of sources to see if it's described basically the same way in each. If so, then that's a good indication the news is credible, since it's corroborated in multiple sources. You can also try double-checking the veracity of news on special fact-checking websites. Just do a Google search on fact-checking websites to find those sites.
4. Go to the original source. Let's say you've been assigned to write a research paper about how to sharpen students' skepticism of online media. In the course of your research, you come across this website:
McLemore, Clare. (2020) Help Students Become Savvy Media Consumers. ISTE. Retrieved from: https://www.iste.org/explore/help-students-become-savvy-media-consumers
That website provides information that would be useful to incorporate into your research paper, but you're not sure whether it's a credible source to cite. Then you notice the information on the website is derived from two research studies (circled in the screenshot below) that investigated students' ability to critically evaluate online news. The best thing to do then, is to find and read the original studies and cite them instead.
The advantage of going to the original source, that is, the primary source – is that it might be easier to confirm its credibility, plus you'll be getting the information you need directly from the originator, rather than having it filtered and summarized through a second-hand account (like the website to the left which is a secondary source). The further information gets from the original source, the more it can stray from its original meaning or intent.
– Does the author have appropriate expertise and/or first-hand experience on the topic?
– Does the author have appropriate expertise and/or first-hand experience on the topic?
Can you find reasons to believe the author of the source is an expert on the subject? If so, that would count as evidence that the source is high-quality/credible. For example, lets say you were reading: Mama's Last Hug: Animal Emotions and What they Tell us About Ourselves. It's written by Franz de Waal, and if you Google him you'll find that he is a biologist and primatologist in the Psychology Department at Emory University as well as the Director of the Living Links Center at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta, Georgia. Just based on that information, we know he is likely to be an expert on primates and animal emotions, thus his book is credible.
Or, consider whether someone is in a position to know about a topic. For example, suppose a particular species of macaw found in the Amazon is considered extinct because scientists haven't caught a glimpse of it in over fifty years. However, when some scientists go to the Amazon and ask indigenous people living in the macaw's range if they've spotted the species, they say they see it rarely, but they do regularly spot it once or twice a year. Those indigenous people are in an excellent position to know about the macaw, and their eyewitness reports provide highly credible evidence that the macaw is not yet extinct.
– Does the author have a reputation to protect as an accurate, reliable writer?
– Does the author have a reputation to protect as an accurate, reliable writer?
Consider whether the author of a source needs to foster and protect a good reputation. For example, a journalist working at a reputable newspaper like The New York Times must maintain a good reputation for writing quality material, otherwise they'll get fired. Why would they get fired for writing bad articles? Because The New York Times needs to keep its subscribers happy in order to stay in business, and subscribers to this newspaper want and expect factual articles.
So, if it seems like it's in an author's interest to be an accurate and reliable source of information, that counts as evidence that their works are credible. It makes sense, then, that you should be especially wary of information coming from unnamed or anonymous authors, because those authors needn't be the least bit concerned about their reputation. If they write misinformation, nobody can call them out on it because nobody knows who they are. Below is a good example of a website which uses anonymous authors to provide information and as a result suffers from credibility issues: Yahoo Answers.
This question about invasive species submitted to Yahoo Answers was answered by two people: 'zoolabcoord' and 'Blue Haired Old Lady.' Since these people didn't provide their real names, they won't suffer any negative consequences if the information they've provided is inaccurate or incomplete. In fact, this lack of accountability became an intractable problem for Yahoo Answers and eventually it shut down on May 4, 2021, as you see in the headline below which criticizes Yahoo Answers for its "bad questions and even worse answers."
So now you may be wondering: "What about Wikipedia?" Wikipedia articles don't provide named authors which means the authors needn't worry about protecting their reputation as accurate, reliable writers. Except that Wikipedia has strategically put other measures in place to make these anonymous authors feel more accountable for their contributions. For example, claims and facts must be backed up with cited references, and if this is not done properly, the content is likely to be removed or edited. This policy motivates contributors to do good work – otherwise they're wasting their time writing content that will get taken down.
There are also edit tracking systems and article grading systems in place. Plus, Wikipedia has a hierarchy of trusted, volunteer administrators and "bureaucrats" who perform various functions to monitor the site, which includes the ability to block contributors who are abusing the system.
All these measures give Wikipedia articles much more credibility than they'd have otherwise, and certainly more credibility than Yahoo Answers. While you should always be careful about the accuracy of content in Wikipedia articles, overall it's a phenomenally useful source given that it's authored by thousands of decentralized, anonymous contributors.
QUESTION 4. For practice, think some more about reputation and repercussions. Let's say it's discovered that a reporter from the New York Times has been writing "fake news" articles about politics in the Middle East. What are the likely repercussions?
A. It's likely to result in a lot of very bad publicity for the New York Times that will damage their reputation.
B. Some readers of the New York Times might cancel their subscriptions because they are suspicious this is not an isolated incident and they no longer trust ANY articles in the New York Times.
C. The New York Times will most likely fire the reporter.
D. The reporter might not be able to find work elsewhere, or at least not at a reputable newspaper, because nobody trusts them anymore.
E. All of the above are true, and illustrate the principle that a source is more likely to be credible if there are negative repercussions for NOT being credible.
(Answer at bottom of page.)– Does the author provide ample explanations and evidence as well as citations to outside sources?
– Does the author provide ample explanations and evidence as well as citations to outside sources?
If the author backs up their claims with explanations, evidence, or examples, that's a really good sign. If their evidence includes references (also known as citations) to other, credible sources – that's even better! (You'll learn more about citations in Lesson 7.)
For example, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has authored a website on Frequently Asked Questions About Invasive Species which provides facts, backed up with examples and evidence, as well as a list of References that were consulted. Nice!
Is the author's intent is to inform the reader in a way that's neutral, objective, honest, and ethical?
Is the author's intent is to inform the reader in a way that's neutral, objective, honest, and ethical?
What is the motive of the author of the source? Does it seem like they primarily want to inform the reader with facts? Or, does it seem like the author is trying to persuade you or manipulate your emotions? If it's the latter, then be wary. The purpose of most high-quality/credible sources is to inform, using language that's neutral, unbiased, and unemotional, and that's exactly the tone you'd expect from an author whose intention is to be honest and ethical.
Let's look at an example of an information source that's not neutral and unemotional, and how this makes its credibility suspect.
The adjacent article is from an online news source called Daily Mail and it's about how too much time online can lead to social isolation, which can pose certain health risks. But the headline for this article is considerably more sensationalized, since it suggests that using Facebook could lead to cancer! That headline is intended to catch the attention of Facebook users and scare them into clicking on the article and reading it. This will increase hits to the Daily Mail website and exposes the reader to advertising, which is exactly what the publisher wants.
This is a classic example of clickbait. In general, beware of any source that tries to sell products, persuade, scandalize, or evoke emotions such as fear, anger, righteousness, or a sense of tribalism (us vs. them).
QUESTION 5. A source that has a shocking or attention-grabbing title is very likely to be credible.
true
false
Credibility evidence that didn't make the cut
Credibility evidence that didn't make the cut
Now let's talk about some evidence that didn't make the cut. Many people think that when they conduct a Google search, Google will retrieve the best, most credible results first. But, that's not the case. Google doesn't know what's high-quality and credible and what's not, it just uses algorithms to try to make a good guess at which results will be the most useful to you and it ranks those first. In determining how to rank results, Google explains that its "search algorithms look at many factors, including the words of your query, relevance and usability of pages, expertise of sources, and your location and settings." (For more details, see: https://www.google.com/search/howsearchworks/algorithms/.) While it's true that those factors may indicate quality and credibility, there will be plenty of times when the algorithms get it wrong. Thus, don't assume Google is delivering the most credible results to the top of your Google results list.
QUESTION 6. Google always delivers the best results to the top of your results list.
true
false
What if you can't find enough evidence to judge a source's credibility?
What if you can't find enough evidence to judge a source's credibility?
For lots of sources, and especially those found on the internet, you may not be able find enough evidence to feel confident the source is high-quality and credible. That's ok. This happens a lot, especially when you're a novice researcher. The best course of action is to ask someone with more experience (such as your instructor) for their opinion of the source.
When you ask for advice, make sure the person you're asking is aware you already tried to judge the source's credibility on your own. Explain to them how you looked for evidence but came up short. Then, make sure they explain to you why they think the source is or isn't credible. That way you will learn from each other! This is really important because experienced researchers tend to forget how difficult it is for novice researchers to judge credibility – nor do they understand where novice researchers are getting stuck. If we don't have open conversations about this issue, we'll never unravel why establishing credibility is such a difficult skill to learn – or to teach!
Ok, so what did you get out of Lesson 4?
Ok, so what did you get out of Lesson 4?
You should be able to provide examples of information needs where quality and accuracy are important.
You should know that scholarly sources are considered to be credible.
You should be aware of different types of evidence that signify a source is high-quality/credible.
You are finished with Lesson 4.
You are finished with Lesson 4.
What's next?
What's next?
1) You can proceed to Lesson 5, or if you need to show you've mastered this lesson, you must take the test.
2) To take the tests associated with this tutorial, go to the LINKS TO ALL TESTS page and follow the instructions you see there. You should also DOCUMENT YOUR COMPLETION of tutorial tests.
3) Before you take the tests and/or move on to the next lesson, please fill out the adjacent survey to share your thoughts about Lesson 4! Note that the survey is anonymous so your name and email are not being collected or shared.
THANK YOU!!
THANK YOU!!
Answers to questions on this page:Question 1. AQuestion 2. trueQuestion 3. trueQuestion 4. EQuestion 5. falseQuestion 6. false
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