Web Evaluation Guidelines

Source or Affiliation:

A comparison can be made here between publishers of print materials such as books and magazines and publishers of Web pages. Book publishers that want to establish a reputation for integrity must adhere to ethical and editorial guidelines. For example, a University Press must adhere to strict standards of scholarship to earn a reputation for producing books well regarded in the world of scholarship. Likewise, a university web site may produce web pages with high standards of scholarship.

Hints for determining Source or Affiliation:          

• Where does this information come from?
   
• Who put it there?
   
• If an institution is responsible, what type of institution is it? Is it a college, university, company, government agency, or non-profit organization?

To answer the above questions, you can look near the top of the web page or at the end of the page. There may also a link to the “Home page” for the site.  You might also want to truncate (erasing the last part of the URL backwards until you come to a slash mark) the URL until you find a statement of responsibility.  Remember that the designated  ‘webmaster” may only be responsible for the technology behind the page and not responsible for the content of the page.

Another clue might be to examine the URL (address of the web page). The URL gives the domain name for the sponsor of the page. The top-level domain can show the type of organization that published the site and the country where it was published.  The top-level domain name assignments are no longer as narrowly defined as they once were so even this will not give you definitive information.

A good example of Source or Affiliation is the Small Business Administration site:        
                                http://sba.gov/managing/marketing/market.html

Authority:

A strength and/or a weakness of the Web is that anyone can become an author without the benefit of an editor or the reputation of a publisher behind his/her work. Traditionally, authority is judged by the author’s background, experience, education, and credentials.

Hints for determining Authority:

·         Who is the author?

·         Is the author the creator of the information?

·         Does the author list his/her credentials, position, education, and/or experience?

·         Is the author an expert on the topic he/she is writing about? Or is the person a hobbyist or merely stating a personal opinion?

·         Can you contact the author or institution with the information given? Is the e-mail address or street address given? Is telephone or fax information supplied?

·         If a non-profit organization is the author, is the organization known as a source of reliable information on the particular topic?

To answer the above questions, you can again look at the top and bottom of the page. There is often a hyperlink to more information about the person or institution.  There is often a link  “About Us” that usually presents the mission statement for the organization. There may also be a link to other information published by the author or organization. Again you can try truncation to go back to the home page for the web site. A URL with a tilde (~) in it usually indicates a personal page instead of official pages of a site.

If you cannot find information about the author or organization from the particular web page, you could use a search engine to try to find additional information from other sites. You could also check library book catalogs and periodical indexes to see if the author has published any other works on this or related topics.

A good example of Authority is found on the page Weight Loss During Chemotherapy     http://www.oncolink.org/experts/article.cfm?c=1&s=3&ss=3&id=2036 .

IF YOU CANNOT VERIFY THE AUTHORITY OF THE INFORMATION, DO NOT USE IT AS A SOURCE IN YOUR RESEARCH PROJECT.

Purpose and Intended Audience of the Source:

In books the author states his purpose in the preface, and the reader can get an idea of the specific topics to be covered in the table of contents. Sometimes in web pages there is a mission statement for the web page, but often the purpose will have to be surmised.  A “site map” is comparable to a table of contents.

Hints for determining Purpose and Intended Audience:

·         Is there a mission statement indicating the purpose and intended audience? And if so, how well does this page fulfill its goal?

·         Is the author trying to sell, persuade, inform, explain, or to present research for other professional, or to vent a particular point of view, or is it possibly satire?

·         Is the page designed for the novice, expert, professional, or hobbyist?

Again you should look for an “About Us” link. If the top-level domain is .com it may be a commercial site with the purpose of selling a service or product so be sure to use critical thinking skills when reading the claims and information on the page.

 These two sites demonstrate differences in Purpose and Intended Audience of the Source: