Your web search yielded a long list of results; now what do you do? How do you choose the results that are accurate, relevant and (in other words) appropriate for inclusion in an school research paper?
If you've done a good job composing your search, then many of the results will (initially) appear to be useful. However it's important to remember that anyone can publish material on the web. So a site that initially appears to cover the topic that you are researching could in fact contain irrelevant content or content that is extremely biased, opinionated, or non-factual. Thus, you're next step will be the task of wading through the results and choosing those that are most relevant to your research.
For example, let's say that you search for:
Among the many results that you get back are the following two websites: one is the University of California at Berkeley's Museum of Paleontology site; the other is a "Debate Darwin" site, to which users can post opinions and essays either for or against evolution.
From the University of California, Berkeley; Museum of Paleontology website.
From the "Debate Darwin" website.
Depending on you research goals, you may chose to use content from one site over the other, from both sites, or from neither. By examining the Intent and Content of a site, you can make good decisions about whether or not it is useful for you research project.
Once you have determined that a site's intent and content are appropriate for your research, there are still several key steps that you should take before referencing that site's content in your paper. Even if a website seems to provide information that covers the topic you are researching, you're going to need to do a little extra work to determine that the content of that site is, in fact, original, credible, and accurate. By examining The Three A's: Author, Activity, and Affiliation, you can further discern whether a site's content is truly research quality.
Up Next: Intent and Content
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