Evaluating Sources: CARRDSS

Students in 9th grade at HBW learn that resources vary in their quality, detail, scope, bias and reliability.  They learn that a reference source may provide a general overview at the beginning of a research project, but increasing detail (perhaps from full-length books) is needed as the process of research goes on. Academic journal articles can provide a new insight or unusual perspective for deep analysis. As they move into high school, students transition from relying on resources freely available on the internet to scholarly, professionally edited sources that may be copyrighted and only  available in subscription databases. Students in high school work to discriminate between sources and understand their strengths and weaknesses according to the CARRDSS criteria:

• credibility/ authority
• accuracy
• reliability
• relevance
• date
• sources behind the text
• scope and purpose.

Library Media Specialist Joyce Valenza recommends that you apply the criteria CARRDSS to evaluate Web-based sources.  Her approach evolved over many years of teaching information literacy. The table below introduces questions and tools to use CARRDSS to thoroughly evaluate sources for research. This content presented below was developed to expand upon the CARRDSS criteria with valuable input from Ms. Emily Orser, Ms. Anne Applin, and the library at the University of California at Berkeley.)

Exercise 1:

What is your reaction to the following web sites?  Would you rely on them for your research?  What strategy do you use to evaluate how reliable they are for your research?  To what extent does applying the CARRDSS criteria help you to include or exclude any of the following sites for your research?

Interesting Facts:

• Pitfalls of Internet Searching: Search Engines like Google are “free” to use.  But most of them survive by selling advertising in the form of “search results placement” at the top of the list of results, or with links at the side menu.  Those sites might be called “Sponsoring Sites.”  But they might not be the best sites for your research.
  • Some search engines only search through the first paragraph of a web site or the “properties” listed for the web site.  Key terms that are deeper into the web site are often “hidden” in what we call the “Deep Web” or the “Invisible Web” and the search engine does not access that deep.  No search engine is powerful enough to search the ENTIRE internet for the best sources.  At one point, the best that could be searched was estimated to be only 17% of web sites.
  • Many search engines list the most POPULAR web site at the top, determined by what web site has had the most visits. That’s why Wikipedia is usually the first web site listed in your search results.  It is widely visited. It is not necessarily the most authoritative web resource available, however.
  • Research has shown that most researchers don’t look past the first 3-4 web sites in a results list.
  • An advocacy group, seller or hate group is trying to persuade its audience; it is not concerned with being balanced or fair to another side.
• Print or Internet? It depends upon the topic. Many information specialists feel they can better trust printed material, in most cases.  Here’s why.  And yet, the internet is able to be more current and inclusive of a variety of opinions, as Wikipedia shows us. History, pure science, biographies and many other scholarly topics might be most reliably covered in print. Yet, other subjects such as the newest technology uses, entertainment, celebrities, current events and very specialized hobbies are all topics whose web-based resources might be more detailed and specialized as well as more current than what one’s library offers in print.
• News Sources and Political Fact Checking:  People who study the trends in news reporting note that journalism shows these trends that indicate that the consumer of news must be much more careful about “what they can believe,” how information may be biased, may lack detail. or be unsupported by fact, examples, statistics, etc.  A great source on this topic is a book titled, Blur: How to know what’s true in the age of information overload by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel (New York: Bloomsbury, 2010.)  We have a copy in TJ’s library.
  • As more people turn to the internet, our traditional sources of news are losing their advertising dollars. The “old trusted” network news corporations and big newspapers have less money to spend on research and sending journalists around the world… at the same time that they are having to cover more of the world.  Many news organizations rely on second-hand information.
  • Info-tainment… reliable?  In order to compete with many news outlets for a market, the news appears to concentrate more and more on celebrities and salacious stories and not matters of the most significance or meaning. People often complain that the news is “dumbed down” these days. What do you think?
  • The appearance of 24-7 news stations means that more programming is loaded with “filler” and “pundits”– people providing commentary rather than fact-based reporting. Newspeople have found that by hyping up the way they describe news events, they can “hook” their audience with a constant never-ending sense of URGENCY.  (It keeps people glued through the advertisements when they are constantly listing items as “breaking news.”)  Furthermore, the format of news shows has increasingly staged 2 “opponents” against one another for an argument or debate, and often times these “experts” are paid representatives of special interest groups.  These programs are much easier to provide than an in-depth documentary that collects information and video coverage from various sources.  But the anchorman must really be on his or her toes to challenge any misinformation provided by someone being interviewed.  These sites can help “fact check” the claims of the talking heads:
    • • http://www.factcheck.org/
      • http://www.politifact.com/
      • Fact Checker column in The Washington Post  (a weekly column that gives up to four “Pinochios” to rate content that is untruthful)
      • http://www.propublica.org/tools/
• Domain Extensions (such as .com or .edu) are helpful only to a certain extent:

– anyone can register .com, .net, .org domain names.  So it’s not a great way to tell whether a source is “credible”– .edu and .gov can only be used by educational institutions and governmental institutions… but still not necessarily reliable

• New domain extensions are here!  For a very high price, companies and individuals are able to invent and use new extensions (beyond the traditional .gov, .com and .edu, for example). Wikipedia provides a helpful list of domain extensions.   Read more (good visual.)  lA list of new domain extensions is provided by a company that helps entities obtain domain names. Learn about the controversy around this expansion in this 2011 blog posting.  A discussion at ICANN helps one understand how rules the various domains are governed.
• Discussion of Web site evaluation – this excellent article…
  • Categorizes sites with misinformation as follows:
    • counterfeit
    • parody/spoof
    • fictitious
    • malicious
    • product sellers
    • subject-specific misinformation sites (to misinform about science, health, business)
    • Also: beware of sites that have been hacked
  • At the end, it provides strategies to check on hoaxes. Use blue box at bottom of article.

Sneaky Sneaky!

• Former Alaska Governor and US Presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s supporters (and the world) were concerned when she made some statements that were historically inaccurate about the midnight ride of Paul Revere. Her statements made her look unintelligent and the press went to town.  Embarrassed and concerned about her reputation, her supporters went to the Wikipedia pages about Paul Revere’s midnight ride and they changed the details there to reflect her false statements so that if people were checking Wikipedia, it made Palin’s inaccurate version look “correct.”
• People in politics also sometimes alter the facts about their enemies in online wikis (such as Wikipedia.)
• Anyone with an agenda can put up a “factual looking” web site and steer people wrong.
• Some people make hoax sites to entertain others.  But they get so many hits that they rise to the tops of results lists generated by search engines. Museum of Hoax Sites