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SHS 115 - Interpersonal and Groupwork: Evaluate Your Sources

How to evaluate your sources

An extremely important part of the research process is evaluating your sources.  With each source, you want to answer questions such as:

  • Who is the author and what is their expertise, authority and background in the area they are writing on? 
  • Does the information look accurate? How can you tell?
  • Is it relevant to your research topic? 
  • Is it current enough or is the date not important? 
     
  • Is the information biased?  How can you tell?

Trying to answer these questions for information you find on web sites can often be more of a challenge than print sources.  With no editorial or review process on the web, it is crucial to evaluate the information you find to ensure it is credible, reliable and accurate.

Tutorial: How to Evaluate Health Resources on the Internet

It is extremely important to evaluate the sources of the information you find on the Internet, especially medical information.

Because anyone can put information on the web, so you need to be able to verify the credibility of the source and the information provided on the web sites you use for your research and studies.  

Here is a short 16 minute tutorial on how to evaluate the health related information you will find on the web. 

Source:

NIH: National Library of Medicine

  

Watch: Evaluating Websites

Portland Community College Library