Evaluating a Website

Before you use a website as a source in your research, you need to be sure it is an appropriate source for this purpose. Here are some relevant questions that you should ask.

1.  What is the intended audience of this page, who is it written for? How can you tell?

2.  How clean is the data? Has the site been put together with some reasonable care and professionalism?  At a minimum, has it been proofread carefully?

3.  What kind of biases does the site have?

4.  Who is sponsoring this site? Does it link its authorship to a known/respected organization or expert?

5.  Can you verify this information elsewhere?

6.  What kinds of links (and to what kinds of sites) does it provide?

7.  When was the site last updated? Is this kind of information clearly available?

(The questions here come courtesy of my colleagues Chris Grugel and Marian Rothstein, whom I both acknowledge and thank for their efforts.)