Essential Steps

(4) Evaluating the information you find

While you are looking for information you need to evaluate whether it is really relevant to the question you are trying to answer. If it does seem relevent you need to think critically about the information to ensure that you are using the most appropriate material for your work. The key elements you should look for are:

• Relevance to your topic
• Intended audience
• Currency of the information
• Reliability of the author or information source
• Coverage of the topic that the information provides
• Accuracy of the information
• Level of objectivity of the author

Generally for university related assessment you need academic or scholarly resources.