Skip to Main Content

Historical Methods Research Guide

Evaluting Sources

When you search for information you will find a lot of stuff. Though, is the information coming from a credible source? Is it useful for your research? Is it good information?

It's important no matter where you found the information that you take the time to evaluate it. There are various methods out there to evaluate materials including:

  • The SIFT Method: SIFT is a series of actions you can take to determine the validity and reliability of claims and sources on the web.
  • The CRAAP Test: Stands for Currency, Relevance, Authority, Accuracy, and Purpose. The CRAAP Test is a list of questions to help you evaluate the information you find.

 

SIFT Method Video Tutorials

Ask yourself whether you know and trust the website or source of the information.
Feel yourself getting overwhelmed in your fact-checking efforts? STOP and take a second to remind yourself what your goal is.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Knowing the expertise and agenda of the source is crucial to your interpretation of what they say.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Search news databases for relevant stories. Try Google News and Global Newsstream, a library database of national and regional newspapers. Use known fact-checking sites. Use reverse image searching to find relevant sources on an image.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Find the original source.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.