College Success: Evaluating Information
Evaluating information is important!
Whether it is for a class or at your workplace, when you are making a medical decision for yourself or a family member, or deciding who or what to vote for, you need to make sure that the information you are using is reliable and factually correct.
SIFT: Stop - Investigate the source - Find trusted coverage - Trace back to the original
When evaluating a website, look beyond the page itself. Some sites look very professional and credible but are actually giving you biased or untrue information.
This short, online video from Mike Caulfield at Washington State University gets you started on becoming an efficient fact checker:
Three more very short videos of Mike Caulfield explaining fact-checking techniques.
- Investigate the Source"Investigate the Source" means open a new tab and look up the website you are evaluating. Wikipedia!
- Find the Original SourceIs the webpage you are evaluating the original source of the information, or are they citing another source? Look for an "According to..." statement in your source, and then look up that source.
- Find Trusted SourcesOver time, find information sources that you trust because they verify the accuracy of the information they provide. Learn fact-checking sites, and new sites with professional reporters and fact-checkers.
- SIFT (the four moves)This is a link to Mike Caulfield's own page on SIFT and the four moves.
Evaluating Sources: Questions to Ask
How do you know if a source is right for your research? Below are some questions you can ask about your sources. While you're not always expected to use sources by expert authors in publications without any bias, it's still good to be aware of these things when considering how well you trust their conclusions.
- Is this article relevant? What is the author investigating and how does that relate to what you're researching?
- Who is the author and what are their qualifications? Are their qualifications good enough for the weight you are placing on their conclusions?
- Who published this? What is their purpose? To inform? To promote a particular viewpoint? To sell something?
- Have other people reviewed the information provided to make sure it's accurate? If it's in a newspaper, magazine, or journal, it will have been reviewed at least by an editor and possibly by other experts on the topic.
- Can you tell where the author got their information from? Their own experience? Interviewing people? A research experiment? Other experts? Do they provide references or some clue about their own sources?
- Is the information current enough for the topic you're researching? For example, something on global warming from 1980 will be pretty out-of-date today.
Research on misinformation
- Pew Research Center: MisinformationJuly, 2023. Most Americans say the U.S. government and technology companies should each take steps to restrict false information and extremely violent content online.
- The Journalist's Resource: MediaMedia: Research roundups, articles, explainers and tip sheets about how journalists report the news and how audiences consume it