When carrying out research and locating information and evidence for your assignments, an important part of the process is evaluating the information you find. The ability to evaluate and critique a variety of sources is not only an important element in achieving good marks for your assignments, it also forms part of Manchester Met's graduate outcomes and is an important transferable skill valued by employers.
This guide provides tips in evaluating sources of information for validity and credibility, and also identifies academic sources and explains why you should use such scholarly material in your assignments.
The acronym CRAAP stands for Currency, Relevance, Authority, Accuracy, and Purpose. These evaluation criteria are explained in more detail on this guide and in the video below.
Use the CRAAP test as a guide to evaluate sources of information in the context of your assignment and your information need, as this may determine if some criteria may take priority over others.
Be aware that it may also be useful to engage with sources that do not pass the CRAAP test as long as you critically evaluate the information. It is important that you locate and understand multiple perspectives on a topic, keep an open mind and acknowledge that new research can potentially dispute previously widely held views.
The CRAAP test was created by Sarah Blakeslee of the Chico's Meriam Library at the University of California
Currency - this refers to the timeliness of the information.
Consider the following:
Relevance - this refers to the importance of the information in relation to your assessment
Consider the following:
Authority - this refers to the expertise of the source including the author/creator/organisation.
Consider the following:
Accuracy - this refers to the reliability, correctness and truthfulness of the information.
Consider the following:
Purpose - this refers to why the information exist.
Consider the following:
Your tutor will ask you to use academic sources for your assignments, which includes scholarly books and journal articles.
Although you should still evaluate these sources of information in terms of relevancy and currency and assess the appropriateness of the content for purposes of your academic work, there is less need to evaluate academic sources in terms of quality.
The following videos provide an overview of these types of academic sources.