Research Guide: Evaluating Sources

Use this guide to learn more about how to evaluate your sources

Why Evaluate Sources?

Why Evaluate Sources?

Your academic career and personal reputation depend on it!

  • If you use poor quality sources, your research paper could contain errors, overly-biased information or out-of-date facts
  • Instructors will check your sources to see if you have made good decisions about where you found your information
  • Knowing how to evaluate will help you make better decisions in other areas of your life, such as:
    finding accurate medical information, voting on issues during election time, presenting reliable information to your coworkers in a meeting...etc.

Evaluate ALL your sources

Do Your Sources Pass the CRAAP Test?

Evaluation is about asking the right questions and using the C.R.A.A.P test of evaluation is just one way to review and assess the quality of your sources.  Do your sources pass the CRAAP test? If not, find a better source!


Currency: The timeliness of the information
  • How recent is the information? Can you find a date of publication?
  • Is the currency of information important for your particular topic?
  • Does information about your topic change rapidly or frequently?
  • Is older, historical information important for your topic?
  • If source is a website, are the links functional?
Relevance: The importance of the information for your needs
  • Does the information relate to your topic or answer your question? 
  • Is the source popular or scholarly?
  • Is the information at an appropriate level (i.e. not too elementary or advanced for your needs)?
Authority: The source of the information
  • Who is the author/publisher/source/sponsor? 
  • What are the author's qualifications, credentials, organizational/educational affiliations, and lived experiences? 
  • Is there contact information, such as a publisher or email address? 
Accuracy: The reliability, truthfulness and correctness of the content
  • Where does the information come from?  Does the source list references or cite claims?
  • Has the information been reviewed or refereed?
  • Step outside that source. Can you verify claims in other sources?
  • Are there spelling, grammar or typographical errors?
Purpose: The reason the information exists
  • What is the information being published? Is it to inform, teach, sell, entertain or persuade? 
  • Who is the intended audience?
  • Can you determine the point of view of the source?
  • Do a little research into the author or publication's political, ideological, cultural, religious, institutional or personal biases.
  • For web sources, what is the domain? (.edu, .gov, .com, .org, .net)?
  • For web sources, who are the sponsors of the site?  Are there advertisements? Do they affect or color the information being presented?

Download a copy of the C.R.A.A.P. Test below

Assess your Information Sources with SIFT

SIFT Evaluation Tool

Use the technique of Lateral Reading to Validate Claims and Sources

(click on image to enlarge)

SIFT: Stop. Investigate. Find a better Source. Trace back to Source

This work is licensed under a creative commons attribution license.

Step 1: Stop

Ask yourself whether you know and trust the author, publisher, publication, or website.

  • If you don’t, use the other fact-checking moves that follow, to get a better sense of what you’re looking at.
  • In other words, don’t read, share, or use the source in your research until you know what it is, and you can verify it is reliable.
Step 2: Investigate the Source

When investigating a source, fact-checkers read “laterally” across many websites, rather than digging deep (reading “vertically”) into the one source they are evaluating.

  • Leave that source and see what others have said about the source.
  • Piece together different bits of information from across the web to get a better picture of the source you’re investigating.
Step 3: If needed, find better or more appropriate coverage.

What if the source you find is low-quality, or you can’t determine if it is reliable or not?

  • You want to know if it is true or false. You want to know if it represents a consensus viewpoint, or if it is the subject of much disagreement.
  • Your best strategy in this case might actually be to find a better source altogether, to look for other coverage that includes trusted reporting or analysis on that same claim. 
Step 4: Track the source back to the original.

What if you feel uncertain about the "full story" of a fact or claim, or you suspect someone might want to mislead you (as when controversial issues are presented)?

  • Trace the claim, quote, or media back to the source, so you can see it in its original context and get a sense of whether the version you saw was accurately presented.

Modified from Mike Caulfield's SIFT (Four Moves), which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

SIFT infographic-CCby

Graphic created by Suzanne Sannwald based on Mike Caulfield's work on SIFT. Creative Commons Attribution License.

Video: Using the C.R.A.P. Test to Evaluate Websites

Source: "Using the C.R.A.P. Test to Evaluate Websites" by Portland State University Library, is licensed under a Standard YouTube License.

This video explains the C.R.A.P. test and then uses it to evaluate three websites on the topic of performance enhancing drugs in sports.

Can you pass the test?

Try it out!

What is your evaluation of these websites? Use the CRAAP Test to evaluate the three websites on clean energy below.