ENG 102 Dr. McNamara

Evaluating Sources

Evaluate all information, whether from a book, article, or website. 

• Find out what you can about the author/producer.
  • Google the author or organization’s name (lateral reading).
• Is it intended for a scholarly or general audience?
• Is it fact, opinion, or propaganda?
  • Facts are objective.
  • Opinion gives thoughts or ideas of a particular person or group. Opinion pieces are not necessarily unreliable, but the author should recognize there may be other varying opinions. Opinions may be biased. 
  • Propaganda spreads possibly biased information for a specific person, group, or cause. 
• Cross-check the information with other sources.
• How timely is the source?
• Examine the list of references if available.
• Read the abstract/summary to determine if it’s on your topic.

These guidelines were derived from General Guidelines, Online Writing Lab (OWL), Purdue University.

MLA also provides a checklist for evaluating sources. 

Other ways to evaluate sources 

Searching for information about the author or organization responsible for the website, article, or book is an excellent way of evaluating sources. This method is called lateral reading. 

• Google the author or organization responsible for posting the information. 
• Search the author/organization in the library's OneSearch box. 

Primary Sources

Below is a link to an article from ProQuest Historical New York Times. It is an interview with Harold Bride, a radio transmitter, who was working aboard the Titanic when it sank. Bride survived and was interviewed days after the event for this article. (You do not need to read the entire article.)

Bride, Harold. "Surviving Wireless Operator of the Titanic. Thrilling Story by Titanic's Surviving Wireless Man. Bride Tells How He and Phillips worked and How He Finished a Stoker Who Tried to Steal Phillips's Life Belt". New York Times (1857-1922), Apr 19, 1912, pp. 1. ProQuest, Accessed 7 May 2021. 

First hand accounts of events are considered primary sources of information. A secondary source would be someone else describing what Bride experienced. Primary sources are excellent to use for research papers; however, you can usually use both primary and secondary sources in your work depending on your assignment. 

While primary sources are excellent to use for research papers, sometimes personal interviews may not necessarily be an accurate description of events. Each witness may have a different perspective of the event. Our view is sometimes obscured by personal emotions, our self-identity, or community values. Consider, for example, when law enforcement officers interview witnesses at the scene of a car accident. Do all witnesses report the exact same sequence of events? Should as many personal accounts as possible be gathered in an attempt to reconstruct the accident?

What is the difference between a popular source such as a magazine and a peer reviewed source / journal?

Magazines are written for the general public.  They often have a lot of advertisements in them.

Journals, on the other hand, are targeted to students or professionals working in a particular field.  The usually have very few ads in them.  The articles usually include bibliographies at at the end and the author's or authors' credentials (where they went to college and where they work) are given.

Sometimes a publication is peer-reviewed which means that all of the articles have been read and approved for publication by experts in the field.

Peer reviewed materials are excellent sources of information for scholarly papers!

Popular sources such as magazines

• Have a lot of pictures
• Many advertisements
• No bibliographies or list of sources
• Sometimes no author is listed

Peer reviewed materials

• Have a lot of graphs and charts usually
• Few advertisements if any
• Bibliographies are included
• Authors credentials or backgrounds are given 
•  

A peer reviewed source does not have to be a journal. Recently, the University of Michigan Press published A. D. Carson’s new i used to love to dream, a peer-reviewed hip-hop album. 

Examples of scholarly journals, trade magazines, and popular magazines

The chart above is from the article cited below. (Reading the article is not required!)