Evaluating Sources

When evaluating a source for use in your work, you must consider several factors: What type of source is it? Is the source credible/reliable? Who is responsible for the source? Other questions you may ask yourself are: for whom is the source produced (target audience), how does the source refer to others and when was the source published.

In addition, you must assess whether the source is relevant for your subject or your research question. What does the text aim to convey? What is the source’s message? Read the source with your own research question or thesis statement in mind. How can the source help you answer your assignment?

• Where does the author find their material?
• On what material does the author base their claims? What kind of data underlies the work?
• Does the author have sufficient theoretical and empirical documentation for what they claim?
• Does the author present something in their material as especially important for their argumentation?
• From what disciplinary perspective is the source written? See also Ways of reading for more on how you can evaluate the content of a text.

Is the source reliable?

Tips

This video provides a checklist for source assessment:

Author

When assessing a source, a good start can be to take a closer look at who is responsible for it, usually the author. Is the author clearly presented? Does the source have a single author, or multiple? Is the author a person or perhaps an organization? Can you find out more about their background and field of study? Searching for the author’s name in Oria or Google can provide useful information.

Publisher

The publisher can also influence the content. In some cases, this can be a question of advancing specific interests or attracting potential readers. What is published by the publisher or the journal? Look for a description of what they are interested in publishing, and what subjects they usually cover. You can also research the publisher and journal in the Norwegian Register for Scientific Journals, Series and Publishers. If the publisher or the journal are listed as either level 1 or level 2, you may assume that it is a serious, quality source.

Journals at level 1 or 2 have peer review. Peer review means that an article is evaluated by at least two scholars in the same academic field before it is accepted for publication. The author of the article receives feedback on their text and specific suggestions for improvements that will have to be implemented before the article can eventually be published. This ensures the quality of the article. This is supposed to make sure that the article adheres to the academic and scientific norms of a given field.

Current Interest

Check the publishing date for your source. Often, we are looking for information that is updated, and which gives the newest knowledge in a given discipline. In such cases, it will be relevant to concentrate on sources from the last 5-10 years. Other times, we are looking for older information. This can be information published during a historical period or in a specific year. In these cases, references published more than 5-10 years ago might be relevant. To ensure that you are basing yourself on updated knowledge, you should acquire the most recent edition of a book, if it has been published in several editions.

• Find out when the book was published by looking at the copyright page in the book (usually on the back of the title page).
• Find out which edition it is. Is it a new and revised edition, or a new print run of an earlier edition?
• Examine the dates of the source’s own references.
• If using online resources, you should find out when the information is published, or when it was last updated.

Relevance

Your research question or thesis statement will be an important guide in assessing to what extent a source is relevant for you.

Begin by reading the text thoroughly. In order to make up your mind about the text’s relevance, you must know something about what kind of text it is, and for whom the text is written.

Target audience and genre

All texts are written with a reader in mind, where the imagined reader is part of what shapes the text. Research articles are written with other researchers in mind, usually in the same field of study. The researcher usually examines something very specific. What research question orients the author? What method is employed? Are the results transferrable to your project?

A textbook is written for students and often has a broader approach. Can the textbook shed light upon your specific research question, or is it too general? Often, you will experience that a combination of different sources makes it possible to answer the questions posed in your assignment.

Be aware that even if a source treats a subject that is relevant to you, it might be interpreted through frameworks completely different from those relevant to your field.

Reliability

When reading a text, you will in most cases be presented with the author’s perspectives. In scientific texts, these perspectives will be based on findings the author has made in their research. As readers, however, we ought not immediately accept these perspectives. We must critically assess the author’s arguments.

A perspective is supported by statements, and such supporting and substantiating statements are called arguments. A central demand of arguments is that they are grounded. The author cannot make up the content of an argument, the content must be based in facts that are observable or that the community of scientists hold true. In order for an argument to be sufficiently grounded, it is required that the reader is given access to the documentation on which the argument rests. When the author refers to their sources or presents their choice of method and data, the reader can see with their own eyes if the author has an appropriate foundation for their claims.

Purpose

You can assess the intention of a text by posing the following question: How does the author communicate their materials or their results? Why is the text written and what is the author’s purpose? What does the author wish to convey to you as a reader?

You can find out how the author communicates their results or their conclusions by examining their rhetorical moves. Read with these questions in mind:

• How is the language used?
• How does the author aim to convince you of the fruitfulness of their perspective?
• Does the author make you ignore other perspectives?
• Are any weaknesses in the presentation of the research made visible?
• What does the author do to hold your attention?
• How are you, as a reader, included? What examples does the author choose to present? Are they funny? Disturbing or enlightening?
• How does the author approach the material presented? How are you, as a reader, included? Is there a contagious enthusiasm in the text? What about the tone of the text?

Exercise: Are these three sources good?

You have found three interesting sources in a search for “health and food”. How do you assess these sources?

What kind of source is it? Is the source reliable? Who is responsible for this source? What does the text aim to convey? What is its message?

Source

Associations of Diet with Health Outcomes in the UK Biobank: A Systematic Review

Our evaluation

This is an article published by the academic journal Nutrients in 2024. We can evaluate the publisher to be reliable and the content to be current. The article gives an overview on the previous research and has a thorough reference list at the end. It could be useful to read this article to gain an overview of the field, before going more in depth into the subject matter by reading the research referenced. Both this article and the sources it cites can be used as sources.

Source 2

10 Eating Changes You Should Make When You Turn 30

Our evaluation

This is a text from the website EatingWell, published in 2024. It refers to research but does not include a reference list. If the content is relevant, it may be appropriate to search for the research which is referred to, but the story from this website is a poor quality source for your academic work. The text is informative but presented in a targeted way. The title and introduction are particularly targeted, and one should consider in their evaluation that this text is published in a commercial channel.

Source 3

Food preferences associated with age, sex and weight category

Our evaluation

This is a bachelor’s thesis from 2021. The thesis might be relevant for your topic, and it can be worthwhile to look more closely at the reference list. But as a rule, we do not use student texts as sources, unless they present completely new information. Look at other sources first, and consider critically if you need to refer to the master’s thesis.