Evaluating What You Find

Why? How? What?

Bibliographic Criteria
Authority
Currency
Intended Audience
Source/Publisher

Content Criteria
Accuracy
Coverage/Scope
Objectivity/Bias
Quality
Relevance

Activity

 

Quality

When doing research, it is important to be certain that you are only using information resources that have been carefully written. It is helpful to use journals that have been peer-reviewed, which means that the articles have been reviewed by experts in the field for accuracy, authority, and acceptance within the field. Articles that have not been reviewed by knowledgeable authorities may show errors, poor organization, and repetitiveness, which are indicators of lower quality work. Questions to ask are:

• Is the resource peer-reviewed?

• Is the text well-written, with few to no grammatical or spelling errors?

• Is the text well-organized, according to the standard practices for academic writing in the discipline?

• Is the text repetitive, or are ideas clearly and sequentially presented?

• Does the text flow well, or is it choppy and difficult to read?

Examples:

• Quality in Print Sources
  
  
  
  

• Quality in Websites
  Determining the quality of a website can be a little more difficult than determining quality of a print source. Much of the determination of quality will depend on the site's layout and ease of navigation.