Evaluate Sources
This section of the tutorial provides strategies and considerations for you to critically evaluate the sources you find for inclusion in your assignment, project, or other information need.
How do you decide which information sources are "good"?
It depends.
Evaluation is an art, not a science, because every topic and situation is different. Citing a social media post may be out of place in a paper about the causes of World War II, but a presentation on online bullying might benefit from real-world examples. Below are some strategies you can apply to make this process a little easier. Evaluating sources starts during your search. Keep in mind that these ideas do not represent all possible ways you can evaluate a resource!
Before reading the whole source, determine if it fits with your topic:
- Look through your search results to see which ones appear most relevant to your topic- the ones that most closely match your topic. Focus on titles, subjects, and bold face terms*. (*Look for the bold face or highlighted words in the record of a database search- those match your search terms and if you see a lot of bold face, the source might be useful.)
- Skim the abstract or summary. This will help you decide if you should read the whole article.
- Look good? Start by skimming through the methods, results, and discussion sections.
- If you skim the source and it still looks good, read the whole thing. Don't spend time reading sources that don't work for your topic! (And feel free to go beyond the first page of results to find useful sources.)