Source Evaluation

When doing research or using information for personal purposes, it is important to evaluate your sources to determine if they will meet your information needs. 

There are two main areas to assess when determining whether or not to use a source:

• Relevance: is the source relevant to your research needs?
• Credibility: is the source trustworthy?

When evaluating a source for relevance, you should consider:

• Does it fill an information need related to your research topic or question?
• Was it written during an appropriate time period?
  • For some topics, this may mean you should use newer materials. 
  • For other topics, older resources from a specific time period may be appropriate.
• Does it meet the source requirements of your assignment?

When evaluating the credibility of a source, it's important to look beyond the source itself to see what others have said about it. Instead of just accepting what a source says about itself, we need to verify that the information is accurate using outside sources. 

When assessing a source's credibility, ask:

• Is the site, publisher, and/or author trustworthy?
• Can you verify the information in other, trustworthy sources?

Lateral reading is a strategy used by fact-checkers to determine whether a source is credible. 

The following resources were used to develop this page. Both offer additional information to help researchers assess the appropriateness of their sources.