Credibility

trustworthy source, author’s credentials, evidence of quality control, respected authority. Goal:  a source that supplies good evidence that allows you to trust it.

Accuracy

up to date, factual, detailed, exact, comprehensive, audience and purpose reflect intentions of completeness and accuracy. Goal: a source that is correct today (not yesterday), a source that gives the whole truth.

Reasonableness

fair, balanced, objective, reasoned, no conflict of interest, absence of fallacies or slanted tone. Goal: a source that covers the subject thoughtfully, truthfully  and reasonably.

Support

listed sources, contact information, available corroboration, claims supported, documentation supplied. Goal: a source that gives convincing evidence for its claims, a source you can verify with at least two other sources. 

More Detailed Information Regarding Evaluating Internet Research Sources

Pre-evaluation

Do you want facts, opinions (authoritative or just anyone's), reasoned arguments, statistics, narratives, eyewitness reports, descriptions? If, for example, you are writing a research paper, and if you are looking for both facts and well-argued opinions to support or challenge a position, you will know which sources can be quickly passed by and which deserve a second look, simply by asking whether each source appears to offer facts and well-argued opinions, or just unsupported claims.

Select Sources Likely to be Reliable

"What source or what kind of source would be the most credible for providing information in this particular case?" Which sources are likely to be fair, objective, lacking hidden motives, showing quality control?”  By thinking about these issues while searching, you will be able to identify suspicious or questionable sources more readily.

Source Selection Tip:
Try to select sources that offer as much of the following information as possible:
Author's Name
Author's Title or Position
Author's Organizational Affiliation
Date of Page Creation or Version
Author's Contact Information
Some of the Indicators of Information Quality (listed below)

Reliable Information is Power

If we make a decision based on wrong or unreliable information, we do not have power--we have defeat. There is no single perfect indicator of reliability, truthfulness, or value. Instead, you must make an inference from a collection of clues or indicators, based on the use you plan to make of your source.  . If you want reliable facts, then using facts from a source that meets certain criteria of quality will help assure the probability that those facts are indeed reliable. 

The CARS Checklist

The CARS Checklist (See Above)

• Credibility
• Accuracy
• Reasonableness
• Support

Few sources will meet every criterion in the list but if you learn to use the criteria in this list, you will be much more likely to separate the high quality information from the poor quality information.

Credibility

Author's Credentials

The author or source of the information should show some evidence of being knowledgeable, reliable, and truthful. Here are some clues: 

• Author's education, training, and/or experience in a field relevant to the information.
• Author provides contact information (email or snail mail address, phone number) 
• Organizational authorship from a respected organization (corporate, governmental, or non-profit). 
• Author's position (job function, title)

Evidence of Quality Control

• Information presented on organizational web sites 
• On-line journals that use refereeing (peer review) by editors or others 
• Postings of information taken from books or journals that have a quality control process 

Indicators of Lack of Credibility

You can sometimes tell by the tone, style, or competence of the writing whether or not the information is bogus. Here are a few clues: 

• Anonymity 
• Lack of Quality Control 
• Bad grammar or misspelled words. Most educated people use grammar fairly well and check their work for spelling errors. More than two or three spelling or grammar errors is cause for caution, at least. Whether the errors come from carelessness or ignorance, neither adds to the information or the writer’s credibility. 

Accuracy

The goal of the accuracy test is to assure that the information is actually correct: up to date, factual, detailed, exact, and comprehensive   

Timeliness

Comprehensiveness

You need a source that gives the full and rounded story completely and accurately. A  source that deliberately leaves out important facts, qualifications, consequences, or alternatives, may be misleading or deceptive.

Audience and Purpose

For whom is this source intended and for what purpose? Be sure that the intended audience and purpose of the article are appropriate to your requirements or at least clear so you can recognize information pretending to be fair but having a hidden agenda -- like persuasion, sales, humor, etc.

Indicators of a Lack of Accuracy

• No date on the document 
• Generalizations 
• Old date on information
• Very one-sided view 

Consistency

The consistency test simply requires that the argument or information does not contradict itself. Sometimes when people spin falsehoods or distort the truth, inconsistencies or even contradictions show up. These are evidence of unreasonableness.

World View

A writer's view of the world (political, economic, religious--including anti-religious--and philosophical) often influences his or her writing profoundly, from the subjects chosen to the slant, the issues raised, issues ignored, fairness to opponents, kinds of examples, and so forth. World view can be an evaluative test because some world views in some people cause quite a distortion in their view of reality or their world view permits them to fabricate evidence or falsify the positions of others. For some writers, political agendas take precedence over truth. If you are looking for truth, such sources are not the best.

Indicators of a Lack of Reasonableness

Writers who put themselves in the way of the argument, either emotionally or because of self interest, often reveal their lack of reasonableness. If, for example, you find a writer reviewing a book he opposes by asserting that "the entire book is completely worthless claptrap," you might suspect there is more than a reasoned disagreement at work. Here are some clues to a lack of reasonableness:

• Intemperate tone or language ("stupid jerks," "shrill cries of my extremist opponents") 
• Overclaims ("Thousands of children are murdered every day in the United States.") 
• Sweeping statements of excessive significance ("This is the most important idea ever conceived!") 
• Conflict of Interest ("Welcome to the Old Stogie Tobacco Company Home Page. To read our report, 'Cigarettes Make You Live Longer,' click here." or "The products our competitors make are dangerous and bad for your health.")

Support

The area of support is concerned with the source and corroboration of the information. Much information, especially statistics and claims of fact, comes from other sources. Citing sources strengthens the credibility of the information. (Remember this when you write a research paper.)

Source Documentation or Bibliography

Where did this information come from? What sources did the information creator use? Are the sources listed? Is there a bibliography or other documentation? Does the author provide contact information in case you wish to discuss an issue or request further clarification? What kind of support for the information is given? How does the writer know this? It is especially important for statistics to be documented. Otherwise, someone may be just making up numbers. Note that some information from corporate sites consists of descriptions of products, techniques, technologies, or processes with which the corporation is involved. If you are careful to distinguish between facts ("We mix X and Y together to get Z") and advertising ("This protocol is the best in the industry"), then such descriptions should be reliable. 

Corroboration

See if other sources support this source. Corroboration or confirmability is an important test of truth. And even in areas of judgment or opinion, if an argument is sound, there will probably be a number of people who adhere to it or who are in some general agreement with parts of it. Whether you're looking for a fact (like the lyrics to a song or the date of an event), an opinion (like whether paper or plastic is the more environmentally friendly choice), or some advice (like how to grow bromeliads), it is a good idea to triangulate your findings: that is, find at least three sources that agree. If the sources do not agree, do further research to find out the range of opinion or disagreement before you draw your conclusions.

What you are doing with corroboration, then, is using information to test information. Use one source, fact, point of view, or interpretation to test another. Find other information to support and reconfirm (or to challenge or rebut) information you have found.

Corroboration is especially important when you find dramatic or surprising information (information failing the moderateness test, above). For example, the claim that a commonly used food additive is harmful should be viewed with skepticism until it can be confirmed (or rebutted) by further research. The claim may be true, but it seems unlikely that both government and consumer organizations would let the additive go unchallenged if indeed it were harmful.

External Consistency

While the test of corroboration involves finding out whether other sources contain the same new information as the source being evaluated, the test of external consistency compares what is familiar in the new source with what is familiar in other sources. That is, information is usually a mixture of old and new, some things you already know and some things you do not. The test of external consistency asks, Where this source discusses facts or ideas I already know something about, does the source agree or harmonize or does it conflict, exaggerate, or distort? The reasoning is that if a source is faulty where it discusses something you already know, it is likely to be faulty in areas where you do not yet know, and you should therefore be cautious and skeptical about trusting it.

Indicators of a Lack of Support

As you can readily guess, the lack of supporting evidence provides the best indication that there is indeed no available support. Be careful, then, when a source shows problems like these:

• Numbers or statistics presented without an identified source for them 
• Absence of source documentation when the discussion clearly needs such documentation 
• You cannot find any other sources that present the same information or acknowledge that the same information exists (lack of corroboration)