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The CRAAP Method, used to evaluate information from websites to determine its relevance to our needs, was created by Sarah Blakeslee and other librarians at California State University. CRAAP stands for currency, relevance, authority, accuracy, and purpose (Laskey, 2024), Blakeslee (2004). Each of the parts from the catchy acronym help us determine if a source is worth using.
The CRAAP Method, used to evaluate information from websites to determine its relevance to our needs, was created by Sarah Blakeslee and other librarians at California State University. CRAAP stands for currency, relevance, authority, accuracy, and purpose (Laskey, 2024), Blakeslee (2004). Each of the parts from the catchy acronym help us determine if a source is worth using.
Currency helps us question whether the information is up to date. This is important because topics related to science, technology, and medicine change so quickly and we want to be sure we are reading about the most current information.
Relevance assists us in making sure the information is relevant to our needs. Some articles might be interesting and related to our topic, but they are not relevant. This is important because we do not want to waste time and we want to make sure we can use the information.
Authority deals with who wrote the information and how qualified they are. We need to know who is behind the information. With so many influencers on the internet, we need to be careful and make sure the author does not have an ulterior motive and is sharing biased news.
Accuracy requires us to check the validity and accuracy of the information by comparing it to other reliable sources. We should not believe everything we read. It is our job to be a careful reader and find trustworthy sources. We should check for spelling and grammatical errors and check to see if the information can be verified in other places (Laskey, 2024).
Purpose answers the question, “Why does this website exist?” Every author has a goal. It is our job to determine if they are trying to inform, persuade, sell, or entertain us. We can better understand the site when we know what the author’s goal is. We need to look for ulterior motives and hidden agendas when using websites (Emamzadeh, 2020).
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