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Introduction to Sources and Evaluating Them

This guide gives an introduction to different resources and how to find information in them and evaluate them based on various criteria.

Introduction to Guide

Knowing what sources are and how to judge whether or not they are appropriate for your paper and also whether or not they are trustworthy enough to use is very important in an academic setting (and also in every day life).  This guide introduces sources and gives a general idea of what they are. It also gives some way to judge what kind of sources you're likely to find given your paper topic.  Moreover, and most importantly, it gives some guidance on how to evaluate these sources on the basis of various criteria. 

Source Credibility

You have always wondered if you can trust a source before you use it in your research, or if you're just trying to use it for debating a political point on Social Media and post a news link to support that given point.  Following these tabs inside the box will pose a series of questions and present some scenarios for your reflection so you can judge the quality of the source.

Knowing whether you can trust a source is important. 

The Most Common Exercise is called the CRAAP test.  This box walks you through that.

First you want to determine how up-to date your information is.  This can simply be done by checking the publication/copyright dates usually found on the front page of an article or on the back of the title page in a book.  The reason why you want to check this is simple enough an explanation if you are in the sciences. Here is an example:

In the early 1990s, medical researchers all thought that AIDS was spread by merely touching the skin of an infected person or by touching their blood with unbroken skin (like that blood would seep through the body).  But now we know that the infected blood or a dirty needle containing HIV on it must penetrate the subcutaneous layer.  So if you're doing research on the transmission of AIDS, unless you're tracking the history of how the science was discovered, do you think it's a good idea to use a source from the early 1990s even though it exists?

So there are time constraints about when something is up to date for your reference.

Generally for sciences it's 5 years.  (How many times have we heard on the news that eggs or milk or wine are bad for you only to hear a year later that these things are crucial to good health?  That's how fast science and scientific research changes.)
Generally for technology 2-3 years.  (How many times have we bought a new tablet or computer only to find that the device is entirely out of date by the time we get it home or at the very latest, by the time a month passes?)
However, for many fields you may want the most up to date information as possible, anyway--whether because your topic necessitates it or you know that a lot has changed in your field (and what field hasn't changed a lot over the last decade or so) and you know you need current information. You may not want to include articles that include No Child Left Behind when that was three or four Presidential Administrations ago, for example.  Or you may not want to consider a history source that claims that there were relatively few Native Americans on the land before "European Discovery" which is an old theory generally disproved by today's historical analysis. 

Now it seems counterintuitive to check on the currency first before even realizing if the source you have has anything to do with what you are researching, but yes, currency is rather easy to check. But now you really do want to see if there's any match between the source and what your research queries are. 

The scenario that follows can help you to judge the source overall and can be applied to any research scenario you have.  

Are you doing research on Teaching Children or Babies Sign Language but keep finding articles on deafness?  Then you've hit a bunch of irrelevant results for your research and should reassess your search terms.

Now you need to ask: Who wrote this source?

Can you trust a source without an author (and we're not talking about newswires like Reuters or Associated Press or websites, documents, reports, or statutes written by corporate authors such as a report by the American Cancer Society)?

Can you really trust a source where you can't figure out what kind of experience the author has on the topic?

An author who is not a doctor giving medical advice versus a true medical doctor
An author who is an expert in his/her field publishing in a peer reviewed journal versus someone just spouting nonsense on a random blog.

Now we are talking about sources written in the modern era, if you have run across a historical source that lacks an author, it may be because the author was never identified because the source (and origins of the document) have been lost through time--Beowulf is a prime example--or it would have been socially unacceptable or unsellable to have an author's name attached--prime example are the novels written by Jane Austen which were originally sold as written by a Lady. 

Now you've assessed that the author has good credentials.  You now have to ask, regardless of their credentials, is the information presented is actually correct?

When the Pandemic was just starting. You saw stuff online on social media from doctors on Covid-19 where, regardless if they are doctors, they spread differing pieces of information on it, to the point that you didn't know what to believe.  Which doctor is presenting the accurate information?  Can you find consistency within several sets of data versus others?

If it's a set of data, has the method of the collection of said data been enumerated or listed within the source.  Has the data been originally collected by the author or been reported on by author? 

Judging accuracy may be a difficult thing to do, unless you've also gathered other sources to support your topic.  This just proves that it's vitally important never to just use one source for supporting of your paper and thesis.  You may also need to perform some fact checking.

Now that you've assessed that the author is authoritative and the information accurate.  Now you've got to figure out what aim the material has. 

Why did the author write this piece?  To prove a point? To inform us and instruct us on some topic?  Or to satirize? To get even for some wrong? To provide political propaganda?

A fun historical example is Johann Burchard who lived during the historically accepted corrupt Borgia Papacy.  At one point, he was their clerk, and wrote a chronicle glowingly praising the reign of the Borgias over Rome.  But when he fell out of favor, he wrote an expose uncovering all of the corruption that he witnessed.  Which one is the correct version of his memories: the expose or the maybe propaganda piece? 

Is the author a liberal or a conservative politically?  Are they writing something that is on a hot button topic?

If their political leanings are apparent, will they skew absolutely correct information or neglect to include some information that will ultimately refute their point?
Will they have older facts that correctly support their point of view but not have more current information which does not support their bias?

Now here is a caveat.  No source or author is without bias.  Everyone has an opinion about something.  Most sources are out to prove a point.  So having a slant is almost necessary, but an egregious bias and using their own politics to taint their offerings is something to consider and question if one can trust the source or not. 

You've determined that the source works for you but now you've really got to do the real test if this is a good source to use.   

First question: Does the source use citations?

Does the source enter into the academic conversation by quoting from other sources?  

Does it have in-text citations or footnotes/endnotes?  Does it have a bibliography?

If it does, that means it has done it's research and is not just spouting hard to prove data points.  If it doesn't can you really trust anything that it says especially hard to prove data points.  

Now for an exercise, pretend you're doing research into Witchcraft in History.  Scan through the following sources, perform a Google search on the author (if provided) and judge according to the questions and the previous slides, which sources are the best to use.  Note, I have purposefully eliminated the need to ask the relevancy question for purposes of conciseness.   Also note, since this is a historical topic, currency may not prove an issue except for those who are knowledgeable about historiography, which for purposes of this guide is not necessary to have.  So assume every source has current information.

What Sources Are Best for You?

Sometimes you will also wonder what kind of sources you need for your paper. 

First

It is advised that you simply explore what is available.  

Second

Referring to the Information Cycle images below, you may want to figure out how new the topic is and what is available to you.

Russia's Invasion of Ukraine: you'll probably only get news stories vs. Russia's Invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s will have a diversity of source types from the newspapers written at the time, to books written analyzing it.  

Third

You may want to assess what either your personally crafted research questions/thesis or your instructor's parameters for the assignment requires that you use.  

Note: If you need statistical information, unless it's a governmental site or an organizational report that specifically has lots of data readily apparent, you will need to skim the sources that you think may be relevant a bit to see if it does contain data points you need.

Fourth 

Using scholarly articles and books should be a priority if possible; however, don't feel limited to using only these types of sources. Try to find sources that work best for your specific paper. Ultimately, you will want to find sources that help prove your thesis and address your research questions. These sources may include web and magazine sources, as well as scholarly articles and books. Therefore, do not worry about your preconceived notions about what you think you need to find. Keep an open mind when discovering which sources work for your research questions, parameters of your assignment, and/or your thesis. 

Information Cycle

Information Cycle

The following slides will provide examples of what the Information Cycle looks like.  Knowing the Information Cycle will be useful when determining what kind of sources you can get.  For example, you are doing something about something that happened only a week ago, you will know that you can only find information in newspapers (regardless if your instructor requires peer reviewed journals, so you may need to reassess your topic to be something a little less of the moment.)

This image: "The Information Cycle" from the "Information Cycle Guide" authored by Brenda Smith from TRU Libraries: Thompson Rivers University.  https://libguides.tru.ca/infocycle