Evaluating Your Sources

Authority Timeliness Relevance Author's Purpose and Audience Activity: Evaluating Your Sources Once you have found some possible sources of information, either in print or online, you should always read them carefully, noting any questions you may have, any doubts or ambiguities that you may discover in the work. Ask yourself questions: If facts and figures are presented, where did they come from? Are they the result of government or university studies? Could they be the results of biased or incomplete samples? You are more of an authority than you may think--if the work leaves you with some doubt as to its reliability, then using it to back up your own arguments will leave your readers in doubt as well.

© 1999 by Addison Wesley Longman A division of Pearson Education