Library Guides: SOC101 Library Research Skills Guide: Evaluate

Evaluate internet resources

The website domain gives you an idea of the reliability of a website:

.edu (educational institution)

.gov (government)

These are more likely to be reliable and unbiased.

.org (non-profit organisation)

.asn (non-commercial organisation)

Sometimes these organisations may show a bias toward one side of a topic.

.com (commercial site)

.net (network)

Critically evaluate these sites as they may be unreliable.

The CRAP Test: Evaluate information

Use the CRAP test to evaluate any resources you want to use in your assessments.

Criteria	Ask Yourself	Example
Currency	When was the information published? Does currency matter for this topic? Is it current enough for your topic? When was the webpage last updated?	History of educational theories - older resources may be appropriate vs Social media in education - older resources may not be appropriate
Reliability	Who published the information? Is the source reputable? Is it peer reviewed? Does the creator provide references and are those references credible? Are there spelling, grammar or typographical errors?	A satirical news website (e.g. Betoota Advocate) vs A not for profit media group sourcing content from academics and researchers (e.g. The Conversation)
Authority	Who is the creator or author? Sources without an author may be less credible What are their qualifications, affiliations and experience? Are they an expert in the field?	An article written by a self-appointed expert that appears on a blog vs A peer reviewed article written by a team of university academics
Purpose	Why was the information published and who is the intended audience? Is the creator trying to sell, inform, entertain, persuade? Is it fact or opinion? Is it biased or balanced?	A webpage on diabetes from a pharmacy company that produces drugs to treat diabetes. They may have a vested interest. vs Diabetes information from a government website such as Australian Institute of Health & Welfare (AIHW). They have no vested interest.

Evaluating information

Using Google effectively

Google Search Tips

Google can be a great place to start when first thinking about your topic. While it may not provide the scholarly articles that you will eventually cite in your assessment task, it can be a useful tool to help conduct background research. Some of the strategies that we would normally use in a database are a little different when it comes to Google. Try using the search tips and strategies below to help get the most relevant results:

Search Tip	Example
Use a hyphen to exclude words (a NOT search)	student -postgraduate
Use the pipe symbol in place of OR	undergraduate\|postgraduate
Use a colon to search an individual site or type of domain	student site:gov.au
Find a page that links to another page	link:csu.edu.au
Use an asterisk * as a wildcard to replace a word in a phrase	“Charles * University”
Search a number range to only retrieve results from particular years	2010...2017
Retrieve a definition of a word	define:student
Limit your search to retrieving only documents in a particular format	filetype:pdf