Using the Web as an Aid in Research - Evaluating Websites

The Problem

In the past, in the print-based world, virtually all the publishing channels that a university library relied upon had some sort of quality control in place. By contrast, it is now very easy to publish material on the Internet. As a result, much Internet material is of poor quality from an academic point-of-view.

Important Measures in Assessing Websites

There are many measures that may be used to assess a website. The most two important of these are:

the authority or reputation of both the author and the sponsor of the website, and
the apparent quality of information in the website.

Authority or Reputation

This is the easier of the two to assess. Here are some techniques to use:

Determine who the sponsoring body is. You can usually do this by looking for the name of an institution in a prominent location on the page, or shortening the URL from the end to the front, until you determine the website for the hosting institution.
Checking the website to see an institution with which the author of the website is affiliated.
Use Google to find out what others say about the site. You can do this from the Advanced Search option: go to the Page-Specific Search section and put the URL into the Links slot. Look at some of the search results to see who is linking to the site and what they are saying.
Use Google to find out what others say about the author or sponsoring body. (same technique as above)

Quality

This is more difficult to assess. You may have to rely on indirect clues such as the following:

Does the site include any references or links to other sources of information? If so, do they seem appropriate?
Is a quality control process being used?
Is the information likely to be biased by the author or sponsor? E.g. are products or services being advertised?
Does the site seem to be professionally produced? (Are there obvious errors? Does the site document itself well?)

Practice Example

Here is a Practice Example to give you some practice in evaluating websites. It states the question first. After you have done some work, we will go down to the bottom of that page and see some suggested answers to the question.