Education & Teacher Research

• How do you know if the information you've found is reputable? 

• How do you know if it is right for your project?

• How can you determine whether to trust the article, journal, website, video, or other source?

One quick and easy way is to follow these four steps as you explore online:

STOP

When you first get to an information source STOP and ask yourself:

Do you know that website? Do you know its reputation?

If not, use the other steps to figure out what you're looking at.

If you find yourself going off on tangents and getting overwhelmed, STOP and remember what your purpose was.  Are you looking for a quick and shallow overview of a topic or are you trying to chase down each individual claim in a source? Both can have value in different contexts. Use this moment to refocus on your original task.

INVESTIGATE the source

Figuring out the expertise of the person/group making the argument and determining the agenda behind that argument is the key to understanding what a source is trying to convey and why they are making the arguments they are making. 

Take a minute to find out where the creator is coming from to decide if the information they are providing is worth your time.

FIND better coverage

Sometimes you need to know if a claim is true or false.  To do this you may need to ignore the source and find trusted research and analysis to independently verify the claims being made. This could be as easy as checking a library database or reference source to verify, or doing a Google News check to see what the consensus of the community is on the topic.

TRACE claims, quotes, and media back to their original context

A lot of the information you will find contains evidence that is out of its original context.  Sometimes summarizing or clipping videos and quotes is done with accurate representation, but perhaps it has created a misleading argument.  Tracing information back to its original source will let you recontextualize the material to establish if the source you found was accurate.

In addition to being aware of filter bubbles and potential biases in information sources, it is also helpful to understand our own biases and how our brains respond to new, potentially inconsistent and/or emotionally charged information.  

The links below may help:

1. Author / Editor

• Who is the author and/or editor?

  • The author and/or editor (one or more people or organizations) should be identified.

• Is the author and/or editor credible?

  • The author and/or editor should have credentials and expertise relevant to the topic.

2. Publisher

• Who published this information?

  • The organization(s) that published and/or sponsored the information source should be identified.

• Why was this information published?

  • The most credible information sources are those that have been published in order to present balanced, unbiased coverage of a topic (or at least to present both sides of an issue).
  • The least credible sources are those that have been published in order to promote a certain point of view.

3. Content

• Is the content relevant to your project or paper? 

  • It should cover the specific aspects of your topic.
  • It should be up-to-date, if timeliness is critical for your topic. (Check the publication date or, for web sites, the date of the last update.)

• Is the content accurate and unbiased?

  • It should be well thought out, well presented, and well supported with credible sources that can be checked. (Check the sources to see if they are credible and support the source you are evaluating.)
  • If it has been reviewed and accepted by experts in the field, there should be less chance for mistakes and bias. 
  • Keep in mind that a bias can be obvious or subtle. It can be hard to perceive a bias if you tend to agree with the arguments presented.