Why Do I Need to Evaluate Sources?
There are two reasons to use sources that are considered reliable in your research: 1) the information in those sources is more likely to be accurate and 2) citing those sources increases your credibility.
Suppose that your older sister, who is a manager at Red Robin, is a workout and health fanatic. However, if your friend asks for advice on coming up with a new fitness routine and diet plan, it will be more impressive to begin your advice with a phrase like "Well, my personal trainer told me..." or "According to registered dietitian Martha O'Gorman, who works with NIU Nutrition Services..."
"My sister said" just doesn't have the same impact. She might know what she's talking about, but she doesn't have the educational or professional background to prove that she knows what she's talking about.
Is that an elitist attitude?
Absolutely! But it's how things work in academic and professional writing.
Unless they otherwise specify, your instructors want you to use scholarly sources. If you turn in a paper that only cites magazines and blogs, you're gonna have a bad time.
"Bad time" in this context constitutes a bad grade.
Unless they otherwise specify, your bosses will want you to use reliable sources. If you give a PowerPoint presentation based off of information you got from Wikipedia, you're gonna have a bad time.
"Bad time" in this context encompasses incurring your boss's disapproval, being subjected to disciplinary action, being demoted, or being fired.
Aside from boosting your own credibility, certain sources are more likely to contain accurate information than others.
Articles from peer-reviewed journals (also known as "scholarly articles" or "academic articles") are the most likely to have accurate information. The authors of such articles are often experts in the field they're writing on.
Even if they're not, their articles go through a process known as peer-review. That means that at least two experts in the field anonymously review the article and decide whether or not it should be published. If they don't think the information in it is correct, it doesn't get published.
With all other sources, it's hit and miss. That's why you need to learn how to evaluate them!
Reliability Criteria
There are six important factors to consider when assessing a source in order to determine whether it is reliable (meaning that it is both likely to contain accurate information and that it will make you look good if you cite it).
1. Type of Source
Academic articles are the most heavily vetted and impressive type of source.
You might think that books are the next most impressive and reliable type of source, but that would be a hasty assumption. Some books are full of good information, and some books are full of nonsense.
The best way to distinguish between the two is to look at the book's publisher.
Reliable publishing companies include university presses (like Oxford University Press, Harvard University Press, or Northern Illinois University Press) and academic book publishers not associated with schools (like Ashgate, Routledge, or Sage).
If you don't know what company published a book, you can type the title into Easybib's autocite feature, click Autocite!, find the book you're looking for and click Cite this!, then scroll down and see what is listed in the box above "Publisher."
If you don't know whether the publisher is reliable or not, go to the publishing company's Wikipedia page and see if it is described as an "academic publisher."
If not, it is probably not something you want to cite.
It's either from a popular press (like Harper Collins or Random House), which publish novels, diet books, and self-help books, or a self-publishing press (like Createspace or iUniverse), which will publisher anything someone pays them to publish.
Government sources, whether they're printed reports or webpages, are considered reliable. Insofar as you or your readers believe the government is a reliable source of information, that is.
Newspapers are like books: some are more reliable and well-respected than others. Some of the most well-respected ones include The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, the Wall Street Journal, and so on.
Newspapers that are not so well-respected include The Daily Mail or the National Enquirer.
The problem with newspapers is that people who write newspaper articles are usually just professionals at writing newspaper articles. They are not experts in the subject they're writing about. And the newspaper editors, who double-check articles before they get printed, aren't experts either.
So basically, if you want to cite a newspaper, make sure it's a well-respected one and be sure to fact check the information in it using other, more reliable sources.
Magazines are considered less reliable than newspapers. They tend to be aimed at a general audience and contain a lot of fluff, as opposed to important or valuable information.
Web sources are the least reliable and least well-respected type of source.
You may have been taught that webpages that end in .edu or .org are more reliable than .com sources, but that's an oversimplification.
A .edu page has not necessarily been vetted by the university. Any university employee or grad student, and sometimes undergrads, can make one. The Yale School of Art website is a good example, because it is terrible.
And the idea that a .org is reliable by default is ridiculous. 4chan is a .org website (and I'm not including a link to it).
2. Date Published
You always need to make sure that your research is up-to-date.
This is especially important in fields that have to do with science and technology, where new research is being done and new things are being invented constantly. New research and new things are constantly replacing old research and old things, demonstrating that the old things are wrong or making them irrelevant.
The majority of your sources should be from the last 10-15 years.
If you have to go any earlier than that, try and remember or find out precisely how things were different back in the day. Before the '90s, the internet wasn't available to the public. Before the '70s, seeing a therapist or counselor was not socially acceptable.
Sometimes you may also need to cite older sources because they provide historical context for a subject you might be discussing.
For example, if you're writing about a topic related to education and you want to discuss "banking" (the idea that students are empty vessels that a teacher fills with knowledge), you'll need to cite Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed from 1970 because it was the first book to mention that idea.
3. Author
When deciding whether or not a source is reliable, it's important to look at who wrote it. Essentially, all you need to find out is:
* Does the author have academic or professional credentials that make him or her an expert on the subject he or she is writing about?
* Is the author well-respected by other experts in the field? Or does s/he tend to get into disagreements with other experts? Has s/he ever been publicly disgraced?
4. Objectivity
You want to make sure that your source doesn't have a hidden agenda. Authors can be biased, and sometimes that bias is immediately apparent.
I wouldn't expect a fair representation of President Obama's foreign policy from Glenn Beck, an impartial assessment of Jeb Bush's economic policy from Bill Maher, an unbiased discussion about the health effects of marijuana from Doug Benson, or a neutral account of the benefits and shortcoming of vaccines from Jenna McCarthy.
Once you start reading the source, you may find that the author doesn't present all sides of an issue fairly. If she is in favor of something, she only presents information that makes that thing look good without acknowledging its real or potential downsides. Conversely, when she is arguing against something, she demonizes it and does not acknowledge its benefits.
Even authors who argue for the legalization of medical and/or recreational marijuana should acknowledge that some research suggests that weed has hemodynamic consequences (i.e., it can negatively affect the heart by increasing one's blood pressure, heart rate, etc.).
Another author might present you with a problem and then act like there is only one solution.
Even authors who are in favor of immigration reduction and increased border security in the US should acknowledge other options. That could include making it easier to obtain citizenship or work visas legally or investing in the infrastructure of countries whose citizens regularly immigrate to the US, thereby making those citizens want to stay in those countries.
A good source will give you all the relevant facts, suggest a range of solutions or plans of action, and give you some freedom to decide what you believe for yourself.
5. Response
A source might check all of the previous boxes when it comes to its reliability and respectability, but there is still one final test: how other experts and/or the public responded to it.
Reviews of academic books are frequently published in academic journals. For example, Malvern van Wyk Smith published a review of Travels into the Interior of Africa via the Cape of Good Hope in a journal titled English in Africa.
In the review, van Wyk Smith says that the book contains several "mild frustrations that confront the reader" (101). That is the academic equivalent of saying the book is wrong about a lot of things.
Whether they're positive or negative, published book reviews allow other experts in the field to say that they agree or disagree with the information presented in a particular book.
Article responses, also published in academic journals, perform the same function. For example, Ian Glenn, editor of Travels into the Interior of Africa via the Cape of Good Hope, wrote a response to Malvern van Wyk Smith's review of his book.
In it, he says that he "would like to correct some of he more egregious errors in the review and contest some of its claims" (129). He concludes that "having read Van Wyk Smith's commentary, I see nothing that I would have changed in the critical apparatus or the introductory material of the original volume" (129).
That is the academic equivalent of saying
Not all academics are quite as catty or defensive as Mr. Glenn, however. Some take book reviews and article responses very seriously.
The sciences take them particularly seriously, because the basis of scientific knowledge is the principle that you have to keep testing and re-testing information to make sure that it's correct.
Thus, scientists use reviews and responses to correct false information presented in previous studies, to question a previous study's methodology or findings, or to report on results derived from replicating a previous study's research.
Some journals, like Perspectives on Psychological Science (available online through NIU), even publish registered replication reports.
If one researcher describes a study and its results, another researcher can recreate the same study and report his results. If the second researcher gets different results, it means the original study might not be reliable.
IS NOTHING RELIABLE?
This reading might give you the impression that we can never know if anything is true and that no source of information is actually reliable.
However, if you mainly look for academic articles, books from academic publishers, or government documents published within the last ten years, you will find that most have been written by experts who are more-or-less unbiased about the subject they are discussing. If you want to be 100% sure that a source is reliable, you can always go the extra mile and look for reviews or responses, but it usually isn't necessary.
It's only when analyzing a webpage, magazine article, or newspaper article that you need to thoroughly look into the integrity of the source, investigate the author's credentials, search the source for potential bias, and find responses to the source.
And when analyzing an older source, simply find more recent sources on the same topic and see if they confirm or refute the claims made by the older source.
If you can do all that, then you're on your way to writing a well-informed and impressive research paper.
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