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Sustainability Research
Determine reliability with:
SIFT image by Mike Caulfield from "SIFT (The Four Moves)" is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
1. STOP
Ask yourself who, what and where:
Who is the author (or with video/audio, the creator or spokesperson) of the source?
- Is it someone you know?
- What is their reputation?
What did they write?
- Look for a label or heading that identies the type of information.
- For example, do you see labels like Opinion, Research Study, Research Review, Report, News?
Where is it published?
- Identify the original publication, which may be an organization's website or news site.
- YouTube videos may be published on a person's or organization's channel - find out whose.
- Library database articles might be original to the database, or more often, were originally published somewhere else and collected into the database.
2. Investigate the unfamiliar aspects of the source
Investigate the where - search for a Wikipedia article on the organization or what another source has to say about the website
- How reliable, trustworthy and reputable is it?
- Do other sources identify the organization or website as having an agenda, a bias, or a particular perspective on the issue?
Investigate the who - what can you learn about the author/creator and their qualifications to provide information on this topic?
- Look for the author's bio or professional affiliations on the source itself.
- Leave the source and read what others have to say about the author.
- Find other things the author has written or created.
Investigate the what - determine the purpose of the type of source you found
- One website or publication may contain numerous different types of information. Be sure you know exactly what it is you have found.
3. Find better coverage
If your analysis of the who, what and where lead you to question the reliability of that source, find other sources on the topic.
- Go directly to a trusted news source or organization's website and searching for the topic.
- Try a new search using neutral language; limit your search terms to just the words that describe the main topic.
- Search your topic in a library database.
4. Trace claims, quotes, and media back to the original context
Follow links and citations back to original sources to be sure you are understanding the full context of information.
- Do links take you to the original source of the information?
- If not, can you use the information in your source to find the original source that your author/creator relied on?
- Are statistics and data cited - do you know where they came from?
- If not, can you find the original source of the data with a new search?
- Is your source a news article describing or summarizing another source or publication?
- If yes, can you follow a link or search for the original source or publication and read/view it?
- If your source is in a library database, can you determine where it was originally published?
- If yes, you should use the "Investigate where" step to learn more about the original publication.