Knowing if a source is going to useful for your research is an important skill to develop, especially when you are faced with a huge number of search results.
One of the most basic questions you can ask when deciding whether or not to use a source is, does the source add anything to your work? It’s important to realise that just because a piece of information is from an academic source, it doesn’t mean that it will be the right thing to use for your topic.
So remember that a quality source will be no good to you if it isn’t relevant to the point you are making. The context in which you are using the source, whether academic or popular, will be key!
Example:
Essay title: Discuss the influence of blogging on the fashion retail industry.
You will need to read examples of fashion blogs and reference them in your essay. A fashion blog would not normally be viewed as an academic source, but in this context you need to analyse some blogs to be able to write your essay.
You can then add depth to your essay by referring to academic research about topics such as marketing communications.
It is really important to think about the quality of your sources as well as their relevance.
Listen to "Clues to quality' which is a short excerpt from an interview with one of the library team about spotting clues to the quality of sources. A transcript is provided below if you'd prefer to read it.
Transcript: Clues to the quality of sources audio bite (from Put your critical hat on podcast b)
Are there any obvious clues that information is of a good quality?
If you pick up a book from the library you can be relatively confident of its quality, so you might want to check who the publisher is, whether its current enough for your purposes, as information in books is often less up to date than in other sources.
But if you're looking at journal articles by the library databases or from your reading lists, again you can be relatively confident they are from trusted sources, because they'll have been selected by a lecturer, or by the publishers of the database. But I think you will find, I certainly as a researcher, even though I'm a librarian, that I went out on the web. And I think the difficulty when you're doing that is you have to really consider what it is that you found.
So when I find something I don't know much about, I look at things like whether there's a bibliography or a list of references, I'd probably look at who the author is and check whether they're affiliated to a university or some other professional body. And that's a good one, because I think you do need to work out whether they are somebody who you would want to read and know who they might be, but also I think you need to find out wherever you can actually see where it's come from so if it's an article from a journal which journals it from and the full details of when it was published, and if it's a chapter in a book the same thing. So there are a lot of things that sit on the web, out of context, and you do need to know that context to find out whether they are something you can use or not, if only for the simple reason you've got to reference it at the end of the day when you use it in your work.
The CRAAP test can provide a useful framework for reflecting on the quality of sources. Here are some questions to ask yourself about information you have found.
Currency
Relevance
Authority
Accuracy
Purpose
