Evaluating Sources with the CRAAP Test

Posted by Marco Wilson on March 19th, 2021

Evaluating Sources with the CRAAP Test

If you’re composing a research paper, the base of your success leans on the sources you use.

Finding sources is, in unusual ways, more comfortable than it’s ever been. With the touch of a button, you have access to more information than any other human being at any other time in history.

That’s a good thing! But it additionally means that you have to be accurate. There is so much information available, and not all of it is deserving of use. Your research paper is only as effective as your weakest source.

Your job is to make sure that every source you use is deserving use. The CRAAP Test Method helps you do it.

Print Sources vs. World Wide Web

Print Sources

Quality models of printed elements are managed through a system of checks and stability required by peer evaluation, editors, publishers, and librarians, all of whom manage and control access to printed information.
This ensures that printed materials have been within some form of critical review and evaluation, checking informal, badly designed, difficult-to-use, and otherwise questionable elements from getting into the hands of users.

Substitutes in written form are stable. Once in print, information continues fixed for all time. New releases and reviews often are published, but these are separate and different physical entities that can be placed side by side with the originals.

World Wide Web

On the network, anyone can, with no direction or study at all, put up a web page.
On the Web, there is no proper monitoring of much of what looks, except, of course, for pieces written in the online forms of otherwise important scholarly journals and books.

Web support uses hypertext links and needs not to be established in any linear fashion. One can quickly be headed wrong and diverted from the issue at hand. But, of course, one can also be directed to additional information of value.

The dynamic nature of the network and web documents creates significant difficulties with the stability of information and with links between various units of information. Dead or broken and links on the Web are common and others just disappear or are not updated.

Five Criteria for Evaluating Resources-

You might want to remember CRAAP ( Currency, Authority, Accuracy, Relevance and Purpose), if for no other reason than you might be asked to list these criteria and describe them briefly.

Currency

Currency is especially important in the sciences where new developments occur frequently.
In the arts and humanities, currency needs to be judged as appropriate. In some cases, a study written years ago may be essential to understanding.

Consider whether or not the timeliness of the information will affect its usefulness.
In all cases, there should be some indication of the date of the material. If research results are given, consider not only the date of the publication but also when the research was conducted.

Relevance

Authors often have their agendas, for example, to sell products, influence legislation, or capture converts. There is no absolute objectivity against which everyone could recognize. When using any learning resource, you must determine whether the knowledge is enough scope for your purpose or whether it is biased.
Is there any promotion or solicitation for contributions compared with the source? This business guide may skew the subject coverage by the paper.
Does the author provide more than one point of view?
Does the writing use provocative or biased language?

Authority

Who is the author or creator and what are his or her credentials? Is there any evidence of the author's education, other publications, professional affiliations, or experience?
Is there a note or paragraph in the back of the book or on the jacket representing the author's credentials?
Is the author's e-mail address, postal address, or phone number provided?

Accuracy

Is the information provided specific?
For analysis on any topic trading with things and events in the physical world, accuracy is, obviously, of the highest importance.
Data and data must be based on observations, measurements, reviews, interpretations, and results. In the arts and humanities, where imagination is the primary productive force, accuracy is still important in recording names, dates, and places from which creative works, ideas, and opinions originated.
In all cases, all information should be correct. Our results based on research or actual figures that can be checked in other sources?
Are methods of scientific research explained in such a way that they could be reproduced?

Purpose

Determine whether the knowledge expert enough includes the topic. Papers may include only part of the query, and you may require more sources to have a more accurate understanding.

Think about how coverage from one source associates with coverage from other sources.
Look for a declaration describing the purpose of coverage of the source and examine if the knowledge is in-depth enough for your needs.