Research Depot: Evaluating Internet Sources

Introduction
There's a huge number of sites on the web about evaluating internet resources—that's because there has to be. The internet has revolutionized the way information gets distributed, but it's done that for both good and bad. While anyone can publish information and anyone can access it (that's the good), the problem is that anyone can access the information that just anyone can publish (that's the bad).

You should take the time to look at some of the sites on evaluation collected in the links below on your own (it just doesn't make sense to repeat that information here). But, really, these sites just articulate some common sense questions you should ask of any site you want to use as a source: who wrote this? when was it written? how accurate is it? how biased is it? are sources for the information referenced? and is this site likely to disappear? It's as simple as that. You should be able to get a quick sense of a site's quality as soon as you get to it, but you will also want to evaluate any page you plan on actually using in your paper closely (using one of the sites below) because, in the end, you are responsible for the quality of your research and students have failed because of poor or meaningless research, something all too easy to find on the web.

Sites on Evaluating Sites
If you plug "evaluating internet sources" into Google, you'll get about 250,000 results. That's a lot of research to do just on how to do research, so you may want to refer to these selected sites:

• Widener University, Wolfgram Memorial Library: This site is useful because it provides checklists for evaluating different kinds of websites, from personal pages to business sites. That allows you to focus your evaluation according to the kind of site you are considering.
• University of Wisconsin—Eau Claire, McIntyre Library: A thorough set of criteria for you to consider based on "10 C's" and including questions about everything from "connectivity" and "context" to "critical thinking."
• "Evaluate Web Resources" from WebSerch: This site has a great, exhaustive checklist that you can print and use while looking a site. This is a particularly useful site for evaluating sources.
• "Evaluation of information sources" from the Information Quality WWW Virtual Library: This is a bibliography with links to a variety of sites concering evaluation of internet sources.

Bad Sites Can Be Good, Too
One last question to ask yourself as you evaluate a site is "What do I want to do with this site?"—after all, just because a site isn't reliable doesn't mean it's not useful. Unreliable sites shouldn't be used as framing sources, but they can be used as interesting cases. Personal homepages might find a useful place in your project for Ethnic Identities. Sites with spells and charms could help you in Witchcraft. And any number of sites could help you explore how framing ideas work in Popular Culture.

That doesn't mean you don't need to evaluate these sorts of "case sites" as well. In fact, part of your analysis of these sites could have a lot to do with what you determine from evaluating them. But the important thing to remember is that just because a site is not reliable and authoritative doesn't make it useless in a project. Instead, it potentially makes it very interesting as long as you are smart in how you use it.

Tread the Web Carefully
We've already pointed out that research is work, and hard work at that. Some students end up relying on the web because it seems to make all the work go away. It takes a lot of time to read a book, very little to read a web page. It takes a lot of thinking to understand a scholarly article, very little to understand a web page. Going to the library seems like a pain, going online seems like a pleasure. So, it's tempting to just do all your research on the web and be done with it. And it's just as tempting to use any site you find, even ones you suspect are not too reliable.

First, let's be clear: web pages should be a part of your research, but only a part. If you find that your bibliography is nothing but webpages, you need to step back and ask yourself why: have you been avoiding other kinds of research, or is your topic too narrow to find anything in other kinds of sources?

Similarly, if you're tempted to use a page you know isn't very good, you need to evaluate why you want to use a site that may be questionable. Because, let's face it, we often know immediately about a site, and on some level you have a gut feeling about reliability. So why use bad sites? At this point, the thing that needs to be evaluated is your own impulse to use the site: is your topic hard to research? Are you trying to force evidence into some preconceived argument? Or will a site with unreliable information help you make a point about your topic?

These are actually great moments IF you take the time to make use of them. These are great opportunities for you to rethink your project, and whenever you do that, you end up with a better project and better paper. Remember our science analogy: when a scientist finds data that doesn't match her or his theory, it's time to change the theory, not fake the data. So, as you search the net, use it both to help you in your research and to help you in your thinking about the topic.

But research involves more than just using a search engine. You'll be spending time in the library as well, so read on for some help on finding journal articles.

next >>