Academic Writing: Evaluating Sources
Now that we know more about integrating sources, let's take a closer look at how we evaluate sources of information.
Professors are fond of research papers because they require you to find your own sources, confront conflicting evidence, and synthesize diverse information and ideas – all skills required in any professional leadership role. Research papers also allow you to pursue your own topic of interest; your professors have to assume that you are genuinely interested in at least some major part of the course. The open-endedness of research papers sets you up to do your best work as a self-motivated scholar.
Research papers are the best kind of papers! If you have an original twist to an old idea and about five good sources, you pretty much have a research paper. Most of the hard work is done for you already! If I can give you one piece of advice for research papers, it would be to know what you're looking for in an article. If you want statistics, skim for statistics. Knowing what you want will cut down the time it takes you to find sources.
Research Papers: Sources of Information
Citing Wikipedia as an authoritative source may result in the wrath of your professor. Why are even the most informative Wikipedia articles still often considered illegitimate? And what are good sources to use?
The table below summarizes the types of secondary sources in four tiers. All sources have their legitimate uses, but the top-tier ones are preferable for citation.
|
Tier |
Type |
Content |
Uses |
How to find them |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
1 |
Peer-reviewed academic publications: books and journal articles |
rigorous research and analysis |
Provide strong evidence for claims and references to other high-quality sources |
Google Scholar, library catalogs, and academic article databases |
|
2 |
Reports, articles, and books from credible non-academic sources |
Well-researched and even-handed descriptions of an event or state of the world |
Initial research on events or trends not yet analyzed in the academic literature; may reference important Tier 1 sources |
Websites of relevant agencies, Google searches using (site: *.gov or site: *.org), academic article databases |
|
3 |
Short pieces from newspapers or credible websites |
Simple reporting of events, research findings, or policy changes |
Often point to useful Tier 2 or Tier 1 sources, may provide a factoid or two not found anywhere else |
Strategic Google searches or article databases including newspapers and magazines |
|
4 |
Agenda-driven or uncertain pieces |
Mostly opinion, varying in thoughtfulness and credibility |
May represent a particular position within a debate; more often provide keywords and clues about higher quality sources |
Non-specific Google searches |
Everyone knows that a thorough analysis and persuasive argument need strong evidence. The credibility of sources is one key element of strong evidence, but it also matters how sources are used in the text of the paper.
As noted in the previous lesson, writing academic papers is about joining a conversation. You're contributing your own original thinking to some complex problem, be it interpretive, theoretical, or practical. Citing sources helps situate your ideas within that ongoing conversation. Sometimes, you're citing a research finding that provides strong evidence for your point; at other times, you're summarizing someone else's ideas to explain how your own opinion differs or to note how someone else's concept applies to a new situation.
A useful way to think about writing with sources is a They Say/I Say process, as we learned in Unit 2 about synthesizing. You first report what "they" say; "they" being published authors, prevalent ideas in society at large, or maybe participants in some kind of political or social debate. Then you respond by explaining what you think: Do you agree? Disagree? A little of both? This "They Say/I Say" approach can help you find balance in your use of sources.
This video explains how to identify different types of sources:
Evaluation: Credible Sources of Information
Once you've found some interesting sources to use in your research, you must evaluate each of them. This means deciding whether they're trustworthy, reliable, and of good enough quality for an academic assignment.
In pretty much every aspect of our lives, we are constantly making decisions: evaluating the pros and cons, the benefits, the drawbacks, and the possible outcomes. Whether it's shopping for clothes, searching for scholarly literature, listening to a friend's barely credible story, or watching the news, we're making evaluations about everything. The criteria you're judging by may even be pretty similar in all of those cases, but they are just applied slightly differently.
So, what criteria should we be looking at in terms of academic writing? The questions below will help you to determine whether a source should be considered trustworthy or useful:
-
Who: Who are the authors? Individuals? Experts? Companies? Have they written other articles on the same topic? Who published it?
-
Reputation may help in determining trustworthiness. And it's not just the reputation of the authors or the publication. Can you find out if anyone else has subsequently cited the work itself?
-
What: What is the information? Is it useful for your project?
-
It needs to relate to your question – try to keep a focus on your research question not just the general topic.
-
When: When was it published? Is it up-to-date? Is it a significant milestone in the history of the topic? Have the findings been superseded by later research?
-
You're contributing to an ongoing discussion, so you want to reply to the latest points. Often you will need the most current information to answer your question. But don't just arbitrarily cut off anything over a certain age. It may still be relevant to consider significant older works.
-
Where: Where did you find the information: website, blog, book, journal...? Where was the research conducted?
-
Always try to get your information from reputable sources. Check the table above for the best choices; usually, tier-1 sources are recommended.
-
How: How was the research conducted? Is it representative of other research in the field? Is the evidence there, and has the argument been built up well? How can you use it to answer your needs?
-
If it's a piece of research, how did they conduct it? Were the method and sample size appropriate and representative? Will it support the points you are making?
-
Why: Why was it written? What are the motivations behind it?
-
Look out for bias and opinion pieces. For example, a pharmaceutical company may publish research that says their new drug is effective.
This video explains how to evaluate information sources:
Now that we have a better understanding of the relationships between easy structure, purpose, organization, and word choice, let's put it all together in practice.
Sources: Elizabeth Burrows, Angela Fowler, Heath Fowler, and Amy Locklear, https://human.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Composition/Introductory_Composition/Book%3A_Composing_Ourselves_and_our_World_(Burrows_Fowler_and_Locklear)/02%3A_Part_II-_Research_Writing/17%3A_Reviewing_and_Analyzing_Your_Sources/17.02%3A_Evaluating_Your_Sources
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 License.
University of York, https://subjectguides.york.ac.uk/critical/evaluation This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 License.
Hodges University Library, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sagXA6o4pvw
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
Hodges University Library, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sagXA6o4pvw This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
ANU Library, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_ZbckRPCpQ This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.