Authority (credentials)
Who is presenting this information, and what are their related qualifications? Is there an individual author listed, or is the information coming from a group or organization? If an individual author is listed, can you determine if they have relevant education and experience? If a group/organization authored the material, who are they?
Bias (objectivity)
What is the purpose of this web site? Is it designed to present factual information as a public service, or is its purpose to persuade readers to adopt a particular viewpoint? Does it exist to make a profit? Researchers can use biased information as long as they proceed with caution. Put biased information into context and be sure to double-check statistics and “facts” from biased sights against reliable, non-biased sources.
Currency (time-frame)
Is the material current enough to support your research?
For more in-depth evaluation, use the Web Evaluation Checklist Remember you can come across sites like this!
Structure of web page address/URL (Uniform Resource Locator):
www .ChabotCollege (name of site).edu (edu=Higher Education)
|
DOMAIN |
TYPE OF ADDRESS |
|
.com |
generally a commercial organization, business, or company |
|
.edu |
a higher-educational institution, generally in the U.S. |
|
.gov |
a government organization in the U.S. |
|
.org |
suggested for a noncommercial community, but used by a variety of sites |
Country code (two letters) for a country or other geographic entity—include .us (United States), .fr (France), or .jp (Japan)
UC Berkeley's Tutorial on evaluating websites:
https://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/Evaluate.html
