How do you evaluate sources of validity? We, as University of Phoenix students have different options to do research for our papers. The most reliable information source will be the University Library. Other sources available would be the Internet, media (journals, news papers) and encyclopedias, almanacs and dictionaries. Conducting research on the Internet for our courses is going to make evaluating the sources for validity necessary. Unlike the university library collection – “evaluated and selected for usefulness and reliability by educated librarians” – websites and Internet resources are not necessarily evaluated by anyone. That’s why we have to use our critical thinking in evaluating those sources. Using the academic or governmental directories is in our advantage because we know that somebody screened them and listed only those that were reliable and updated.
An easy to use tool for evaluating the Internet sources was offered by Robert Harris, professor and author of WebQuester: A guide book to the web. It’s called CARS test for information quality (Credibility, Accuracy, Reasonableness and Support). What we have to question using this test would be anonymous materials, negative evaluations of the materials, little or no evidence of quality control and bad grammar or misspelled words. You have to ask yourself who the author is and whether or not he is a recognized expert. Some signals of lack of accuracy would be lack of date, (you have to know how recent the source is), generalizations or one sided views that do not acknowledge opposing arguments. We also have to evaluate the sources where extreme or emotional language is used, sources with conflict of interest, inconsistency or contradictions. Statistics without sources, lack of documentation, lack of corroboration, using other reliable sources would be a signal of a potential lack of support of the