Evaluating sources using the C.R.A.P test

Use the C.R.A.P. Evaluation criteria below to evaluate the quality of your sources (books, articles, videos, websites...etc.)

• If your source does not satisfy these criteria, you may want to find a different, more credible source

Currency

• When was the source published or updated?
• Is currency of info important for your topic? (Does info change rapidly or frequently?)
• Is older, historical info important for your topic?

Reliability

• Where do the facts or info come from?
• Is content of the resource primarily opinion? Primarily fact? Is  it balanced?
• Can you find citations or lists of references?
• Can you verify any of the info in another source?
• Does the source go through some type of review process before it is published?

Authority

• Is the info from an authoritative source?
• What is considered “authoritative” for your topic?  Can alternative/marginalized voices or lived experience offer perspective?
• Can you determine the author’s or organization’s qualifications, credentials, expertise, affiliations, experience or biases?
• What do others say about their reputation?

Purpose

• Why is this info being published? To inform, teach, sell, entertain, persuade, other? How did you determine this?
• Who is the intended audience?
• Can you determine if the publisher/sponsor has political, ideological, cultural, religious, institutional, or personal biases?
• For web sources, what is the domain? (.edu, .gov, .com, .org, .net, other?)

SIFT Evaluation Tool

Use the technique of Lateral Reading to Validate Claims and Sources

(click on image to enlarge)

This work is licensed under a creative commons attribution license.

Follow these 4 steps:

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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