Skip to Main Content

College Writing Seminar: Evaluating Sources

Questions to Ask

When looking for sources to use in assignments please consider the following.

  • How current is the information?
    • When was this information published (or posted)?
    • Have there been any revisions or updates?
    • If there are links, are they functional?
  • Does this information relate to your research needs?
    • Who is the intended audience?
    • Does the information relate to your topic or answer one of your research questions?
    • Have you looked at an assortment of sources before choosing this one?
  • Can you trust this information?
    • Who is the author / publisher / sponsor... ?
    • Can you find additional information about the above person or organization?
  • Is it possible to verify the content?
    • Is the information sufficiently cited to trace back?
    • Has this source been reviewed or refereed?
    • Are there general spelling or typographic errors?
  • Why does this source exist?
    • Is the information factual or propaganda?
    • Is the authors viewpoint objective or impartial?

 

If you want to try a numeric test use the CRAAP Test Worksheet.

Guides
https://libguides.juniata.edu/c.php?g=129239&p=843775
libguides.juniata.edu
CC-MAIN-2023-23
73522
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:UE7RMMANSZ2PIBUV6QI7XUTZTAJ63VY4
<urn:uuid:144e4108-98dd-4a6d-92f3-03ef6c937f49>
2023-06-06T03:40:22Z
54.88.35.99
text/html
sha1:MMF4FJEWCFPVHJ5X4GI42GKEOJAFQVT7
<urn:uuid:1eb994ea-e90f-4ac1-a3eb-df68fa8bf416>
https://libguides.juniata.edu/c.php?g=129239&p=843775
response
<urn:uuid:b3459b01-9827-484b-913e-1a714b96cc40>
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2023-23
publisher: Common Crawl
description: Wide crawl of the web for May/June 2023
operator: Common Crawl Admin (info@commoncrawl.org)
hostname: ip-10-67-67-36
software: Apache Nutch 1.19 (modified, https://github.com/commoncrawl/nutch/)
robots: checked via crawler-commons 1.4-SNAPSHOT (https://github.com/crawler-commons/crawler-commons)
format: WARC File Format 1.1
conformsTo: https://iipc.github.io/warc-specifications/specifications/warc-format/warc-1.1/