SECTION 4: EVALUATING WEB SITES

CREDIBILITY

CREDIBILITY asks whether the site is produced or sponsored by a 'credible' source. Is the person, company, or organization that produced the site an authority or expert?

What you want to know is whether the site is produced by a reliable source. Look over the site, and decide if you can answer these questions:

• Is it relatively easy to determine who authored or wrote the site?
• Can you tell who produces or sponsors the site?
• Are the author's or sponsor's qualifications clear?
• Do you feel that the information is valid and legitimate?
• Is there anything suspect or strange about the site, or does it seem perfectly legitimate?

Evaluating the credibility and authority of a site is important, because ANYONE can produce a Web site, and make it look legitimate, even if the information is biased, or flat out wrong. This is why, in sections 2 and 3 of this tutorial, we recommend using sources of information that are known to be fairly reliable: information that is produced by universities, government organizations, and professional associations.

In deciding whether a site is credible, what other questions would you ask yourself? What measures of credibility or authority are important to you? Write your ideas here:

On the next screen, we'll look at an example of a Web site:

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