Evaluating Sources - Practice
Sample Topic - Religious festivals in Nepal
- Source 1Forbes, W. (2006, April 1). Dashain. Hinduism Today. https://www.hinduismtoday.com/magazine/april-may-june-2006/2006-04-dashain/
- Source 2Holmberg, D. H. (2015). Nepal. In T. Riggs (Ed.), Worldmark Encyclopedia of Religious Practices (2nd ed., Vol. 3, pp. 528-536). Gale. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/CX3602600179/GVRL?u=lom_calvincoll&sid=bookmark-GVRL&xid=f8112c2b
- Source 3Dahal, B. P. (2020). Dialectics of Sacrificing and Worshiping Animals in Hindu Festivals of Nepal. Advances in Anthropology, 10(2), 97–124. https://doi.org/10.4236/aa.2020.102007
Sample Topic - Redlining
- Source 1Fernandez, E., Fallon, K., Chen, B., Batko, S., Lastowka, L., Peiffer, E., ... & Ta, J. (2023, March 15). The Ghosts of Housing Discrimination Reach Beyond Redlining: Why Historical Redlining Maps Are Not Strong Predictors of Present-Day Housing Instability. Urban Institute. https://www.urban.org/stories/ghosts-housing-discrimination-reach-beyond-redlining
- Source 2Jackson, C. (2021, August 17). What is Redlining? New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/17/realestate/what-is-redlining.html
- Source 3Benston, G. J. (2004). Racial Discrimination Is Uncommon in Mortgage Lending. In K. F. Balkin (Ed.), Current Controversies. Civil Rights. Greenhaven Press. (Reprinted from Policy Analysis, 1999, October 6) https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/EJ3010269212/OVIC?u=lom_accessmich&sid=bookmark-OVIC&xid=e466a43f
Sample Topic - Gender bias in health care
- Source 1Pinn, V., Martin, M. L., Moreno-Walton, L., Heron, S., & Strickland, M. (2019). Gender Bias: An Undesirable Challenge in Health Professions and Health Care. In Diversity and Inclusion in Quality Patient Care (pp. 23–36). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92762-6_4
- Source 2Dr. Aliabadi Education Team. (n.d.). Gender Bias in Healthcare: Do Women Receive Worse Care? https://www.draliabadi.com/womens-health-blog/gender-bias-in-healthcare/
- Source 3Raypole,C. (2022,January 20). Gender Bias in Healthcare Is Very Real — and Sometimes Fatal. Healthline.
https://www.healthline.com/health/gender-bias-healthcare
Evaluation Criteria Checklists: Options
Checklist Option 1: "4 R's - In the Osborn Public Speaking textbook, the authors recommend that when evaluating sources, you ask if the source meets these criteria:
- Relevant
- Representative
- Recent
- Reliable
Checklist Option 2: "CRAAP" - Another set of evaluative criteria you may have heard before is "CRAAP":
- Currency
- Relevance
- Authority
- Accuracy
- Purpose
Checklist Option 3: "3 Scales" - In Hekman's "Introduction to Evaluation" video, we boil it down further to:
- Relevance
- Authority
- Bias
Summary: Any of these checklists can work! Choose your favorite, or the most memorable to you. But remember, considering the context (purpose and audience) of sources is critical in your evaluation.
Another Approach: SIFT and Lateral Reading
Information literacy researcher Mike Caulfield has developed another method of evaluating sources, called SIFT:
Image credit: Mike Caulfield's SIFT (Four Moves), which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Lateral Reading: A closely related approach is "lateral reading," a technique used by fact-checkers to go outside websites or sources to investigate based on external (rather than internal) information and clues.
For a more in-depth guide to using SIFT and lateral reading, check out this guide from Rowan University's library.