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English 1010

This guide helps students complete projects in English 1010 at SLCC.

Evaluate Sources

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:

  1. 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.)
  2. Skim the abstract or summary. This will help you decide if you should read the whole article.
  3. Look good? Start by skimming through the methods, results, and discussion sections.
  4. 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.)

Final suggestions

Final suggestions:

  • Don't assume that one format of information is better than others... scholarly, peer-reviewed journal articles demand the same amount of evaluation as a website does.
  • Don't cherry-pick your sources! They should come from a variety of perspectives and contain objective information that you can then use to build up your arguments. If you only cite sources from one side of the issue, you may not be seeing or presenting the whole picture to your reader.
  • Consider your purpose and potential biases as you research and create your information product (presentation, paper, poster, etc.), and don't be afraid to explore or include resources that present an opposing viewpoint to your own. This is how we learn and grow!
  • Consider exploring the Four Moves/SIFT process (Mike Caulfield) for evaluating online information. The steps are to Stop, Investigate, Find Better Coverage, and Trace back to the original context.