The amount of information that is available on the Internet is mind-boggling. You can find information on topics ranging from Afghanistan to Zebra populations. You might be tempted to use any information that you find at first glance and be happy. This is not a good idea. While there is a lot of information available, some of it is inaccurate, out of date, or just plain hogwash. Before you use any information you need to evaluate the source to see if the information is credible. Areas that you need to evaluate are the authority of the sites creator, the accuracy of the site, the objectivity of the site, how current the site is, and what type of coverage the site contains. Only after looking at all these areas can you decide if you want to use the information that you find.
top of pageIs this website a personal web page? Does the address include a term that looks like a name (wepps)? If it does, or if it looks like it is being hosted by a service that allows people to post web pages, you may be looking at a page that someone created as a hobby. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but you need to check if the person who created the page is knowledgeable about the information they are posting.
How do you go about checking if someone is qualified to make certain statements? Check to see if the persons name is mentioned in the website (other than in the URL). Does the page tell you where the person teaches, where they work? Use a search engine to find sites about the person (yes you need to evaluate these sites, vicious cycle isn't it). You will need to determine if this person really knows what they think they do.
What is the URL of the page? Some Internet domains intrinsically contain better information. For example Government websites (.gov, .mil, .us or other country code) are produced by Government agencies and contain information produced by that agency. This information is of high quality and should be accurate. You will need to evaluate if the information is biased towards that Governments point of view.
School websites (.edu) are a little trickier to evaluate. If the page is produced by a department or a professor the information contained should be good quality and accurate. However, some schools allow students to produce student websites, these sites should be evaluated as you would any personal page.
Can you find out who created the page? This information can be surprisingly difficult to find. See if there are any links that say about the author, or about this site. Check to see if the author isn't listed on the bottom of the page in small print.
If you can't find the author, can you tell what organization created the page? Again, look for a link that says about this page. If you can't find a link that leads you to information about the organization that sponsored the site, look at the URL. Usually the organization will be between the www and the .com (or .edu or .gov or .org).
For example you are looking for information on drunk driving and you use a search engine to get to the page http://www.madd.org/Laws/state/?StateID=NC. This looks like it might be a good site, but who is responsible for it. Taking everything that we have discussed so far into account, we can find that MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) is responsible for the page. (It is at the top of the page in big letters, it is at the bottom of the page with the copyright information.) If we look at the URL we can see that MADD is part of the URL.
top of pageDoes the site contain accurate information? There are several things to consider. Is the author qualified to cover the topic? If you can't find out who the author is, or who sponsored the web site, assume that the information is inaccurate.
Look at the page itself, are there any misspellings or bad grammar? This can be an indication that the information may not be accurate (keep in mind that the site you are looking at may be produced in a country where English isn't the native language).
Scan the page quickly. If you are using the web to gather information you should at this point have some knowledge of the topic. Does what you read fit in with what you have found from other sources?
top of pageYou are going to need to determine how objective a website is, and what affect any biases are going to have on the information. If the site you are examining is trying to sell you a product, you can reasonably assume that the information presented is designed to make the product look good. If you are looking at a site designed to promote tourism in a region, the historical information is probably accurate, but you probably won't find crime statistics for the area.
How can you determine objectivity? You need to find out who authored, or sponsored a website. If you can't tell, then you shouldn't use the site. If you know the author, then you need to do some background research (could be as simple as searching the net for information on them) to determine if they have any biases. For example the White Houses website www.whitehouse.gov is going to be biased towards the president's policies. The statistics presented will be accurate, but will be chosen to promote the administrations view.
top of pageWhen was the page created? Will this affect the information you're looking for? If you are searching for biographical information on George Washington, a page that was last updated 5 years ago will probably still have good information (we are assuming that it has passed the authority, accuracy, and objectivity checks). However if you are looking for information on computer science, then a site that was last updated 3 months ago may already be out of date.
Check to see if you can find when the page was created or last updated? If you can't this is an indication that the author isn't maintaining the site and the information contained may not be accurate. Check to see that the links on the page work. If one or two don't work it may just mean that those sites have moved or gone down. If a majority of the links on the page don't work, this is an indication that the page you are looking at is out of date.
top of pageDoes the web page contain the information that you are looking for? This seems obvious, but sometimes the blurb that you see on the search engine results screen isn't an indicator of what the site contains. If the site doesn't have the information you want, it isn't going to help you.
Does the site contain links to other sites that are pertinent to the topic that you are researching? Do the sites only show one side of any debates about that particular topic? Is the side that they show the same one that the page you started from had? If a site is willing to link to other sites (and the links are still valid) that show the same topic, but not necessarily the same view of the topic, the information on the page should be useful for you.
Does the site cite the information that it used for the creation of the page? Is the information that is cited the same as the information on the page? If the creator of the page shows you where they did their research, it is an indication that the information will be useful for your research.
top of pageAny source that you use needs to be evaluated before you trust the information enough to use it in your research. The books in the library have been selected by instructors and librarians based on personal experience and reviews from knowledgeable individuals. The Internet has shifted the focus of the evaluation from the library on to the shoulders of the researcher. It is your obligation to evaluate the information on the web before you use it in your research.
top of pageThe following sites contain additional information about website evaluation
Five Criteria for evaluating web pages