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Research Guides

GGR107: Environment, Food and People

How to evaluate a website

 

Ask yourself some of these questions when you're evaluating a website.

Accuracy

  • Is there a bibliography or list of citations?
  • Is the information based on verifiable facts?
  • Do the facts agree with other reputable sources you have found?
  • Are there spelling or grammar mistakes?  (This shows carelessness)

Authority

  • Is there a specific author cited?
  • Does he or she list work at an institution (such as a university or research institute) with a good reputation?
  • What are his/her qualifications?  (PhD, research chair, etc)
  • Is the site sponsored by an organization?

Bias

  • Is the information presented based on fact or opinion?  Is there an obvious bias?
  • Is the site sponsored by an organization?  Might that organization bias the facts presented on its website?
  • Does the author appeal to emotion or to logic?

Audience level

  • Is the website written for children or youth?
  • Are the words used simple or technical?

Currency

  • Does the webpage list a date of publication?  How recently was the website written?
  • Has the website ever been updated?
  • Have there been any significant changes in your topic since this website was written?
https://guides.library.utoronto.ca/c.php?g=250835&p=1672020
guides.library.utoronto.ca
crawl=CC-MAIN-2021-43
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sha1:5ELT7H3KMMGSJZSG24UMW46RZJRYAGZK
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2021-10-21T07:15:41Z
35.183.221.217
text/html
sha1:3A75QEJKXWN66LM4YUA4A7XZJLM3DZEN
<urn:uuid:429f7d77-4c59-4b20-8f01-65578675a005>
https://guides.library.utoronto.ca/c.php?g=250835&p=1672020
response
<urn:uuid:9c3359bd-472e-44ad-adaa-1a807f077744>
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2021-43
publisher: Common Crawl
description: Wide crawl of the web for October 2021
operator: Common Crawl Admin (info@commoncrawl.org)
hostname: ip-10-67-67-180
software: Apache Nutch 1.18 (modified, https://github.com/commoncrawl/nutch/)
robots: checked via crawler-commons 1.2-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/