Evaluating your sources is a critical element of the research process. It is particularly important to evaluate information that you find on the Internet.
You need to evaluate carefully each source to determine its appropriateness and quality. Use the CRITICAL guide to determine if a source is appropriate for your research and to prompt you to think about how you search for and select research materials. This guide supports our commitment to decolonizing information literacy and our focus on I-EDIAA (Indigenous, Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, Anti-Racism, and Accessibility). Evaluation criteria may include:
Anyone can create a webpage so it is particularly important to analyze and assess information that you find on the Internet before using it in a research paper.
Critically evaluating your sources is a crucial step in the research process.
Critical literacy ensures that anti-racism, anti-discrimination, and decolonization is put into practice. Engaging in critical information literacy, readers are encouraged to ask questions such as where the power is in the text, whose viewpoint is present, and whose is missing.