Discovery and Attribution: From the Horse's Mouth

Trust Issues

Evaluating Sources for Relevance, Reliability, Bias, and Age

A rural road to nowhere

As you travel down the road of writing discovery, you will find that not all paths are created equally. Some researching paths lead you exactly where you want to go and others go to places that are not helpful at all. Evaluating the value of the sources you find to support your writing is a four step process.

  1. First, you need to look at the RELIABILITY of the source. Reliable sources are sources where you can trust the information. Filter out sources that are unreliable. To determine reliability, you can ask the following questions about your sources:
    1. Is the publication source personal or professional? Personal sources like blogs are not reliable, even if the person is an expert on the subject. Sources that end in .edu or.org tend to be more reliable.
    2. Is the information source credited and verifiable? Look to see if the source has a works cited page, then try to look up one or two of the sources listed. If there is no attribution of statistics or facts or the sources are bogus, don’t use the source.
    3. Is the information source an expert on the subject? Look for letters after the author’s name that indicate licenses and degrees. Google the author of the book or article especially if you find it online. Check out the credentials of the person who wrote the information to see if they are legit.
    4. Is the publisher well-known or respected? Any government agency, university, or major corporation is trustworthy. Smaller publishers are trustworthy too, sometimes. Again, google the publisher to uncover any dirt that might exclude the source.
  2. Next you must look at the BIAS of a source. Sources that are biased are trying to sell something or push a religious, political, or social agenda. You need to ask why the source is publishing the information here. Sometimes bias is very subtle. Look at the end of the article. If an agenda is being pushed, you will usually find evidence of it there. Do NOT automatically eliminate sources with bias. The information may still be useful if the source is reliable.
  3. Third, you must consider how CURRENT the information is. In certain cases, this is not critical. If I am researching the Civil War, a book written in 1923 may be just as useful as a book written in 2003. On the other hand, information about artificial intelligence written even two years ago may be completely out of date. Consider your subject and the importance of having up to date information before you discard older sources.
  4. Finally, you must decide if each source is RELEVANT. Relevant means that it answers your questions and provides specific information pertaining to your focus. You look at relevance last because you do not want to waste time reading a source that is not reliable, unbiased, and current.

Remember your presentation is only as strong as the sources you use!

Let's practice evaluating sources on the next page.