Robert Harris
Southern California College
Version Date: January 16, 1997
Think about the magazine section in your local grocery store. If you reach out with your eyes closed and grab the first magazine you touch, you are about as likely to get a supermarket tabloid as you are a respected journal (actually more likely, since many respected journals don't fare well in grocery stores). Now imagine that your grocer is so accommodating that he lets anyone in town print up a magazine and put it in the magazine section. Now if you reach out blindly, you might get the Elvis Lives with Aliens Gazette just as easily as Atlantic Monthly or Time.
Welcome to the Internet. As I hope my analogy makes clear, there is an extremely wide variety of material on the Internet, ranging in its accuracy, reliability, and value. Unlike most traditional information media (books, magazines, organizational documents), no one has to approve the content before it is made public. It's your job as a searcher, then, to evaluate what you locate, in order to determine whether it suits your needs.
The first stage of evaluating your sources takes place before you do any searching. Take a minute and ask yourself what exactly you are looking for. Do you want facts, opinions (authoritative or just anyone's), reasoned arguments, statistics, narratives, eyewitness reports, descriptions? Is the purpose of your research to get new ideas, to find either factual or reasoned support for a position, to survey opinion, or something else? Once you decide on this, you will be able to screen sources much more quickly by testing them against your research goal. If, for example, you are writing a research paper, and if you are looking for both facts and well-argued opinions to support or challenge a position, you will know which sources can be quickly passed by and which deserve a second look, simply by asking whether each source appears to offer facts or well-argued opinions.
Source evaluation is something of an art. That is, there is no single perfect indicator of reliability, truthfulness, or value. Instead, you must make an inference from a collection of clues or indicators, based on the use you plan to make of your source. If, for example, what you need is a reasoned argument, then a source with a clear, well-argued position can stand on its own, without the need for a prestigious author to support it. On the other hand, if you need a judgment to support (or rebut) some position, then that judgment will be strengthened if it comes from a respected source. If you quote Joe Doax telling us that the world is in danger of another ice age, I will not be highly impressed, because I do not know Joe's qualifications or evidence for providing this judgment (or opinion). If instead you quote a well known climatologist who shows some good evidence or arguments, then I will give much more credit to the judgment.
Some questions you should ask include: Why is this source worth quoting? What makes it believable? What about it lends strength and credibility to my paper? Here are some possible reasons:
Remember the comment above about using a collection of clues to judge your sources. The fact alone that a person is an eyewitness or an authority or that a position represents that of a whole organization does not automatically grant truth-status to the statements given. But these credentials (from the same root as credible--believable) help lend weight to the positions.
There are several tests you can apply to a source to help you judge how credible and useful it will be:
Author's Credentials. The author or source of the information should show some evidence of being knowledgeable, reliable, truthful. Here are some clues:
Evidence of Quality Control. Most scholarly journal articles pass through a peer review process, whereby several readers must examine and approve content before it is published. Professional editors do the same job for books and commercial periodicals. Statements issued in the name of an organization have almost always been seen and approved by several people. (But note the difference between, "Joe Doax, employee of Big, Inc., says that a new ice age is near," and "Big, Inc. said today that a new ice age is near." The employee is speaking for himself, whereas a statement in the name of Big, Inc. represents the official position of Big, Inc.) Evidence of quality control of Internet material includes these items:
Audience and Purpose. For whom is this source intended and for what purpose? If, for example, you find an article, "How Plants Grow," and children are the intended audience, then the material may be too simplified for your college botany paper. Or if you find an article, "Should You Buy or Lease," that turns out to be an argument in favor of leasing rather than the objective analysis you were seeking, then it may not suit your purpose. Be sure, then, that the intended audience and purpose of the article are appropriate to your requirements. Some qualities to look for to match with your needs are these:
Timeliness. Some work is timeless, like the classic novels and stories. Other work has a limited useful life because of advances in the discipline (psychological theory, for example), and some work is outdated very quickly (like technology news). You must therefore be careful to note when the information you find was created, and then decide whether it is still of value. You may need information within the past ten years, five years, two weeks, fifty years. Old is not necessarily bad: nineteenth-century American history books or literary anthologies can be highly educational because they can function as comparisons with what is being written or anthologized now. But in many cases, you want accurate, up-to-date information.
Reasonableness. How reasonable is the presentation or discussion? Pay attention to the tone. Angry, hateful, critical, spiteful tones often betray an irrational hatchet job underway. Venting is not arguing. Do a reality check. Do the claims lack face validity? That is, do they seem to conflict with what you already know in your experience, or seem too exaggerated to be true? "Half of all Americans have had their cars stolen." Does that pass the face validity test? Have half of your friends had their cars stolen? Is the subject on the news regularly (as we might assume it would be if such a level of theft were the case)? If a hundred two-headed aliens really were sighted in New York carrying "Vote for Elvis" signs, wouldn't you expect to hear about it through other news channels?
Presence or Absence of Negative Indicators. You can sometimes tell by the tone or style of writing that the information is probably suspect or the opinions are dogmatic rather than thoughtful conclusions. Here are a few clues:
Objectivity. There is no such thing as pure objectivity, but a good writer should be able to control his or her biases. Be aware that some organizations are naturally not neutral. For example, a professional anti-business group will find, say, that some company or industry is overcharging for widgets. The industry trade association, on the other hand, can be expected to find that no such overcharging is taking place. Be on the lookout for slanted, biased, politically distorted work. Axe-grinding makes a lot of heat and sparks but not much light. Does the author discuss various opinions about an issue, giving each due respect? Or is only one side presented? Are other sides presented, but only sneeringly or in a "straw man" version that is easily knocked down?
World View. A writer's view of the world (political, economic, religious--including anti-religious--and philosophical) often influences his or her writing profoundly, from the subjects chosen to the slant, the issues raised, issues ignored, fairness to opponents, kinds of examples, and so forth. World view can be an evaluative test because some world views in some people cause quite a distortion in their view of reality or their world view permits them to fabricate evidence or falsify the positions of others. For some writers, political agendas take precedence over truth. If you are looking for truth, such sources are not the best.
Documentation or Bibliography. Is there evidence of the sources for the information you have found? What kind of support for the information is given? How does the writer know this? Note that some information from corporate sites consists of descriptions of products, techniques, technologies, or processes with which the corporation is involved. If you are careful to distinguish between facts ("We mix X and Y together to get Z") and advertising ("This protocol is the best in the industry"), then such descriptions should be reliable.
You're safest with a named source. Someone willing to put his or her name, credentials, affiliation, and contact address on an article is more likely to be reliable than someone making an anonymous posting to Usenet or the web.
Require more credibility for stronger claims. The more that is being claimed by a source, the more credibility (and evidence) you should require. Note the increase in degree for the following claims:
See if other sources support this source. Corroboration or confirmability is an important test of truth. And even in areas of judgment or opinion, if an argument is sound, there will probably be a number of people who adhere to it or who are in some general agreement with parts of it.
Copyright 1997 by Robert Harris
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How to cite this page:
MLA style:
Harris, Robert. "Evaluating Internet Research Sources." 16 Jan
1997. Online. Internet. [Put here the date you read or printed this page].
Available WWW: http://www.sccu.edu/faculty/R_Harris/evalu8it.htm
APA style:
Harris, Robert (1997). Evaluating Internet Research Sources [18 paragraphs].
[Online]. Available WWW: http://www.sccu.edu/faculty/R_Harris/evalu8it.htm
About the author:
Robert Harris is Professor of English at Southern California College in
Costa Mesa, California. [email protected]