WHY? Rationale for Evaluating What You Find on the Web
The World Wide Web can be a great place to accomplish research on many topics. But putting documents or pages on the web is easy, cheap or free, unregulated, and unmonitored.
• Documents can easily be copied and falsified or copied with omissions and errors -- intentional or accidental.
• In the general World Wide Web there are no editors (unlike most print publications) to proofread and "send it back" or "reject it" until it meets the standards of a publishing house's reputation.
• Most pages found in general search engines for the web are self-published or published by businesses small and large with motives to get you to buy something or believe a point of view.
• Even within university and library web sites, there can be many pages that the institution does not try to oversee.
The web needs to be free like that! And you, if you want to use it for serious research, need to cultivate the habit of healthy skepticism, of questioning everything you find with critical thinking.Therein lies the rationale for evaluating carefully whatever you find on the Web.
The burden is on you - the reader - to establish the validity, authorship, timeliness, and integrity of what you find.
Use the CRAAP Test to Evaluate Web Sites
When you search the Web, you’re going to find a lot of information. But is all that information accurate and reliable? You will have to determine this for yourself, and the CRAAP Test can help. The CRAAP Test is a list of questions you can ask yourself in order to determine if the information on a web site is reliable. Keep in mind that the following list of questions is not static nor is it complete. Different criteria will be more or less important depending on your situation or need. So, what are you waiting for? Is your web site credible and useful, or is it a bunch of . . . !
Countless web pages are available on just about every topic, but how can you know what's worthwhile or credible? Evaluation of web pages and websites has become a necessary part of the research process, and a means to sharpen your own critical thinking skills. Some of the fundamental questions to consider during evaluation are:
| AUTHORSHIP Note that "author" can mean a person or organization. |
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| ACCURACY Information must be judged accurate and verifiable before you use it in your own research or assignments. |
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| CURRENCY Look at both the date of publication and update, as well as the dates for any cited information. |
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| CONTENT Does the information on the website meet your research or information needs? |
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| PURPOSE The purpose of the site should be clear. Be aware that some sites present opinion as fact in order to sell or persuade. |
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| DESIGN Visual layout, choice of images and media files often have an impact on a website's professional credibility. |
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Top Level Domain Suffixes |
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.edu .edu = academic, colleges/universities
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.gov .gov = U.S. government produced
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.org .org = organization, may be charitable, religious or a lobbying group |
.com .com = business/marketing, e-commerce |
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Other top level domains you may see: .mil - military websites (official US armed forces) .int - international organizations .net - technical or network sites |
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Add .gov or .edu to end of search to find specific site domains
ex: privacy internet:.gov
