Evaluating Web Sources

hi there today we're going to talk about how do we evaluate web sources not all websites are equal and reliable when it comes to academic research so I'm going to give you some tips to help you determine whether a website is actually worth your time and effort one of the first places students go when they want to do research for an academic paper is a search engine like Google that's not necessarily wrong but you have to be careful about the sources you choose to use for your paper there's a lot of information available on the

internet but not all of it is credible or useful especially for scholarly research today we're going to look at some of the important elements you need to help you determine whether a website is appropriate for your paper research online often starts with a general search on a keyword or two so we're going to look up information on child abuse for this example notice how many hits we get with that broad search over two hundred and fifty million we should probably add a few more keywords to see if we can narrow it down further but we're

just trying to get some general information so we'll start by looking at some of the sites brought up here notice that the first few sites are listed as ads these sites have paid to be promoted so I would probably skip them but let's start with the first basic point of evaluation domain what do those extensions on the URL actually indicate the most common domain is the dot-com that simply means a commercial site that anyone can register and promote whatever they want to pitch yourself even if it's a medical website they might be selling you something

or they might be supported by advertisers who may or may not be connected to the owners dot business for smaller companies and dot info is just another common domain that anyone can register dot edu z' used to be limited to four-year degree granting colleges and universities now they include regionally accredited institutions of higher learning like community colleges many primary and secondary schools also have web domains and in the United States are usually represented by the abbreviation of theirs state name plus k12 dot us and notice sometimes you'll see a dot uk' or a dot CA

in that domain address that simply means that that is a country outside of our area so dot uk' would be the United Kingdom that CA would be Canada but one more word of caution about dot e to use just because they're associated with a college or a school of some kind that does not mean that you'll find scholarly information there for example it could be a professor site that he's put up for his class but it could also be a student's project for a class so you want to make sure you know who the author

of that is government websites are strictly regulated only the government can own these domains so statistics and information found here are pretty trustworthy another common domain is the dot org this domain is usually owned by nonprofit organizations like the Public Broadcasting System or the American Red Cross you can often find decent information on a non-profit site but that doesn't mean that it's of scholarly value anyone can buy a dot org address so there's no guarantee that the information is unbiased or even accurate sometimes even for-profit companies purchase these domains so how do we know if

a website is a good resource well there's more to that website than its you are out think about what we usually consider for our reference information as well as the sources usefulness let's start with some ground rules there are a few things you want to be sure your site has before you even consider using it as a source in your paper first of all make sure you have a named incredible author if you're not sure about the author's credentials google them if you're using a government website you might not find an author in that case

the agency would be considered the author like the US Census Bureau you also want to make sure there's a clear date of publication or at least a date that the site was last updated if your source is an online newspaper and my necessarily be scholarly per se but if it's reputable then it will be considered a professional and journalistic source if that meets your purpose then it's probably an acceptable source otherwise look for something that indicates a scholarly connection you also want to look at the language on that website make sure that it's at the

appropriate level and that it's free of a lot of errors if you get a website that has a lot of misspellings or a lot of typos that's not a good indication as to its scholarly or even professional value you also want to make sure the language is elevated you don't want a lot of slang or a lot of very very simple language it should be something a little more professional than that now this last one can be a little trickier some publications both online and in print have well-defined biases we may know that a particular

newspaper is liberal or one that's conservative but sometimes it's a little more subtle than that so if you're not sure go back to the purpose of the site and the credentials of the authors for some hints about potential bias as for reliability whenever possible triangulate the results that means check to see if you can find similar information than three different sources but beware sources like Wikipedia often cut and paste information so if you see the exact same wording in three different places that's not true reliability that's just three different people pasting the exact same information

these are the basic elements that you might have or that you must have in order to consider a website as a potential source let's take a look at an example one of the first sites listed in our search results as a website called safe horizon org there's a lot going on on this first page here you've got a picture of two smiling children kind of grinning at you getting your attention and you have lots of links to different articles on the left-hand sidebar but what else do you notice about this page let's take a closer

look notice how many times you're given the hint to donate money to this cause there's one right up there toward the top and there's a second one right there in the menu bar and in case you get down to the bottom without realizing it there's another donate button on first glance you consider you should consider what the purpose of the site is the domain extension can only tell you so much the purpose of this site seems admirable enough it's to help victims of abuse but there's really no immediate evidence that we'll find scholarly information on

this site so it may be that we just need to dig a little deeper however too many students want to just use this basic page as their source but what's missing if you can't find key reference information it'll be difficult to cite and it probably won't be a very solid source so let's go back to our basic checklist for source information keep in mind the kind of information you would need for your reference page entry first there's no clear author on the main facts page but if you look a little further go down to the

bottom there's a list of resources so while you can't actually cite an author for this page you could certainly go directly to the resources listed here and use those as potential sources and notice how several of them are government websites they'll probably have some good statistics for you as for publication date this site offers a copyright date but that does not necessarily mean that the information has been updated recently so that one is questionable at best we know that the purpose of the site is to raise money and awareness and while its mission is laudable

I would not count it as a scholarly website appropriate language can refer to age or academically appropriate language but it can also refer to those clear and correct grammar spelling and usage issues in this case we have a couple of mistakes but the site generally seems to be written at an adult and professional level however careless mistakes don't help credibility much so I wouldn't discard this site strictly on these few air alone but I wouldn't be too quick to use it either the site seems to have reasonable information but again we don't have any reason

to believe it's particularly unbiased so this site seems to offer some good information resources for victims of abuse however as far as using this site in terms of scholarly research sources it's not really fit for an academic paper and I would say move on to a better choice wait does that mean you can't use the site at all well y-you can't actually sort this particular site for your paper there are some links to other sources on the site that might be scholarly enough for your purposes let's take another look at it this website might not

be credible on its own but on the home page you'll find a news log one of these items might be useful to you and if you click on one of these resources you end up on another safe horizon web page that has embedded the article there but don't stop there if you scroll down the page you'll see a read the original article here link if you click on that link it will take you to the original New York Times web article now you have a reasonable source it's a major newspaper that appears both in print

and online and could be considered credible enough for certain kinds of research you have the authors and the date of publication and if your site doesn't give you a link to the original go to the main web page for the source in that case the New York Times and search for the article so let's check this article against our list we have an author we have a publication date the purpose is not so much scholarly as professional journalism so we'll count that as solid as long as it's not an editorial the language is appropriate and

formal or professional and bias could be a little bit tricky when it comes to newspapers but a well-respected paper like the New York Times while it leans a little bit more to liberal side it's generally acceptable information it's not empirical research though this brings up a point about newspapers and magazines be aware of what the general perception is about non-academic periodicals if they are well-known propaganda tools just be aware and decide how you plan to use it there are several cheat sites out there and though you might be searching for your topic in earnest sometimes

an essay from one of these sites comes up in your research so make sure you know where the information is coming from before you use it in the paper so avoid site sites like about comm one to three help me calm info please calm even answers at yahoo.com is not really a good place to go as for Wikipedia it is not necessary source so you won't use it as such but you might scroll to the bottom of a Wikipedia page and look at the source of the article sites a lot of times you'll find hot

links that you can click on and go straight to the source that could be very useful for an academic paper though nothing beats a good database of scholarly articles the University System of Georgia gathers databases together in their Galileo service where you can find articles from hundreds of academic and professional journals as well as newspapers and government documents subscriptions are available to all public and private k12 and higher level education institutions and libraries around the state other states have similar services while a Google search can give us some ideas and some resources you have to

do a lot more work to verify the value of a web source the database source like Galileo can do a lot of that work for you for more information on how to navigate this resource check out our next video on using Galileo