Master of Counselling
Evaluating What You Find

Evaluate All of Your Sources

When you conduct academic research it is important to evaluate the quality of each information source before deciding to use it in your research project. In general, information sources located in academic library catalogues, indexes, and databases are more likely than not to be scholarly in nature. However, you should make your own evaluation of all sources you use.

The section of this tutorial on the Counselling literature contains information about the formal process of evaluation called peer review which is applied to scholarly manuscripts submitted for publication. Because there is often no formal process of evaluation for information published on the open Web, this section suggests ways to approach the evaluation of Web sources other than those typically found via academic library catalogues and websites.

Image of wonderment People produce websites for a variety of reasons which may include the desire to inform, entertain, sell, advertise, and communicate with others. If you are looking for scholarly, credible information, have in mind specific criteria you will apply to evaluate what you find. The links below provide criteria to assist you in this process.


Practice Exercise

Choose one of the sets of evaluative criteria listed above, and use it to evaluate these two websites: What is Counseling Psychology? and Eating Disorders Community.

  • Would you use information from either of these two websites in a research paper on counselling psychology or eating disorders?
  • Search for other websites covering the same subjects as the ones you have just evaluated. How do they measure up against the same evaluation criteria?

Discussion Questions

  1. Evaluation of the credibility of sources should take place throughout the research process. Why?
  2. Why is it particularly important to evaluate information you find on the open Web before deciding to use it?
  3. How does deciphering the URL help you evaluate information you have downloaded from the open Web?

Additional Sources of Guidance

Maintained by Rumi Graham

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