When evaluating information, be it via the library databases or on the Internet or anywhere else, you need to determine if the information both meets your needs in terms of the content and if it is also reliable and authoritative enough for the intended use of the information
A few examples of intended uses include: Brief composition pieces, term papers, or learning about topics to increase your own knowledge.
The following criteria should be considered as you think critically about the value and usefulness of information that you encounter as you proceed with your research:
AUTHORITY
Here are a few generalizations relating to this criteria:
(Keeping in mind that for this and other criteria there are always exceptions)
ACCURACY
OBJECTIVITY
Here are a few generalizations relating to this criteria:
(Keeping in mind that for this and other criteria there are always exceptions)
CURRENCY
SCOPE
Here are a few generalizations relating to this criteria:
(Keeping in mind that for this and other criteria there are always exceptions)
Watch the video The Information Cycle from The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Libraries
"Confirmation bias, also called confirmatory bias or myside bias, is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one's preexisting beliefs or hypotheses, while giving disproportionately less consideration to alternative possibilities. It is a type of cognitive bias and a systematic error of inductive reasoning. People display this bias when they gather or remember information selectively, or when they interpret it in a biased way.
The effect is stronger for emotionally charged issues and for deeply entrenched beliefs. People also tend to interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting their existing position. Biased search, interpretation and memory have been invoked to explain attitude polarization (when a disagreement becomes more extreme even though the different parties are exposed to the same evidence), belief perseverance (when beliefs persist after the evidence for them is shown to be false), the irrational primacy effect (a greater reliance on information encountered early in a series) and illusory correlation (when people falsely perceive an association between two events or situations)."
“Confirmation Bias.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/confirmation_bias