Evaluate

There are many ways to evaluate information. Essentially the idea is to establish if the information found is appropriate and suitable. It will also help to find the best sources to use in assignments.

The one used here is SIFT. SIFT is an acronym (Stop, Investigate, Find, Trace) that can be used for evaluation source credibility. It can be used for any information including websites. The idea comes from Mike Caulfield and is reused here under Creative Commons license. A free mini course is available online here.

The University of Waikato Library also uses the CRAAP test and 10 pivotal questions. For more information see the reference list.

Stop - Pause and Ask Yourself

Ask yourself whether you know the website or source of the information, and what the reputation of both the claim and the website is. If you don’t have that information, use the other moves to get a sense of what you’re looking at. Don’t read it or use it until you know what it is.


Investigate the source

You want to know what you’re reading before you read it. Taking sixty seconds to figure out where media is from before reading will help you decide if it is worth your time, and if it is, help you to better understand its significance and trustworthiness.

Research study funded by a pharmaceutical company is probably suspect


Find other coverage

Sometimes you don’t care about the particular article or video that reaches you. You care about the claim the article is making. You want to know if it is true or false. You want to know if it represents a consensus viewpoint, or if it is the subject of much disagreement.

Sometimes your best bet might not be to investigate the source, but to go out and find the best source you can on this topic, or, just as importantly, to scan multiple sources and see what the expert consensus seems to be. Find other sources that better suit your needs — more trusted, more in-depth, or maybe just more varied.

Trace back to the original

Sometimes online information has been removed from its original context. If needed trace the information back to the original source in order to see it in it's original context.

This will allow you to get a sense if the version that you saw was accurately presented.

SIFT IN ACTION

You have an assignment about climate change and rising sea levels. In your Internet searches you come across this webpage. As a critical thinker it is important to evaluate all sources before using in any assignment.

STOP

I don't know anything about this website or the author. I don't know if the claims that there is no way to stop sea level rise is correct or not but I do know that the impact of climate change is very topical.

INVESTIGATE

A quick check of the Science website indicates that it calls the publication a journal and then by searching in Library Search for 'Science' and going to the subsequent ProQuest record shows that it is a scholarly, peer-reviewed journal.

Just knowing this information makes it probably worth my while to read this article, but I want to find some other sources to see if there is consensus or disagreement.

FIND

The article is quoting and summarising a UN Climate Report called the Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate.

The search for other sources locates these three webpages.

  • This website is news site dedicated to the environment and responsible living. It is based on the same UN report as the Science article but is written for a different audience and it not a scholarly or academic source. It has a lot of images with limited details of the origin of these. There is a lot more emotive language, and words like 'may' or 'can' used throughout. It still could be used as a supporting source, although there may be better ones.

  • The Guardian is a well-known UK newspaper. This article is from November 2019 so quite recent. As well as discussing the UN report, it links to other reports published in various scholarly journals like the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the official journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). It supports up the information in the Science article.

  • This is an interesting source. Firstly, the article is from 2018 so 'old' in terms of climate change news and the latest reports. There is no author stated for the article and the 'About Us' page shows that the staff are not climate change scientists and none of them have a science background. At the bottom of the article is "To view the original article from The Guardian, please click here." There is also a link to a study published in Nature journal. Both of these sources (Guardian and Nature) would be better to use than this one.

TRACE

The full report is the original source, this gives context and full details of the research undertaken and results. It has a lot of technical information and forecasting figures. The UN report can be found by searching for the title. The people quoted in the Science article are the authors of the report and were interviewed for the article.

The quote 'There's no scenario that stops sea level rise in this century' used in the title of the article is from an interview with Michael Oppenheimer, one of the report authors and is a statement made by him in the interview. When searching the original source (UN report) for a statement to back this up, we find these statements:

"onset of of an irreversible ice sheet instability" (p.10)

"Ocean warming, acidification and deoxygenation, ice sheet and glacier mass loss, and permafrost degradation are expected to be irreversible on time scales relevant to human societies and ecosystems" (p.44).

"There is limited evidence and high agreement that recent Antarctic Ice Sheet (AIS) mass losses could be irreversible over decades to millennia" (p. 53).

"If the warming is sustained, ice loss could become irreversible" (p. 361)

From these statements it is clear that the Oppenheimer is stating facts from the report and it is not an exaggeration on the research results found.

Module 3 Worksheet.pdf