Critical Thinking: How to Tell if a Source is Reliable
Introduction
When it is time to do research, sometimes your teacher picks sources for you to use. You can safely know that if your teacher chose it, then the source is reliable. But what if you have to select your source? How do you know if it is reliable?
A reliable source is one that you can trust. It is a source that does its best to provide accurate information supported by evidence that anyone who looks for that evidence on their own can find. A reliable source is usually one that has been around for a long time. It is a source that, when it makes mistakes, makes them publicly available to anyone.
Reliable sources are called credible sources. To be credible is to be believable. When you want to share what you researched, or if you want to make a scholarly or scientific argument, you want to use credible sources to back up your thinking so that you, too, can be believed.
You want people to believe you, so it is important that your facts hold up if you get fact-checked by your friend, audience, or teacher.
There are many ways to check if a source is credible. One of the first things to do is to do a horizontal search, which means see if other sources are saying the same thing. If you can’t find multiple sources that back up your source, then it is probably not a credible source.
If you would like a checklist to make it easy to determine if your source is credible, try the CRAAP test. Links to an external site.
Watch
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRlHmK8drWc
Links to an external site.
– Credibility is Contextual. (Research 101 2min) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1k8rcYUmbQ
Links to an external site. – How to Evaluate Reliable Sources (Teaching without Frills 3.48)
Visit
- https://researchguides.ben.edu/source-evaluation Links to an external site. – The CRAAP test. Benedictine University Library
Key Ideas
- Credible sources are trustworthy.
- All sources have a degree of credibility; find the most credible for your best work.
- Sources that end in (.gov) or (.edu) are usually credible.
- Do horizontal searches to verify that other sources are saying the same thing.
- Run your source through the CRAAP test to see if they have currency, relevance, authority, accuracy, and purpose. If so, you have found a credible source. If not, keep looking for a better source.
Apply
Read each of the following scenarios and think about your answer. When you are ready, click to check your understanding.