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12: Evaluating Sources

Last updated

Jan 14, 2025
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- 11.12: MLA Works Cited Pages
- 12.1: Tools for Evaluating Sources

SUNY/Lumen Learning
SUNY and Lumen Learning

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You will need to evaluate each source you consider using by asking two questions:

Is this source trustworthy?
Is this source suitable?

Not every suitable source is trustworthy, and not every trustworthy source is suitable.

Determining Suitability

Your task as a researcher is to determine the appropriateness of the information your source contains, for your particular research project. It is a simple question, really: will this source help me answer the research questions that I am posing in my project? Will it help me learn as much as I can about my topic? Will it help me write an interesting, convincing essay for my readers?

Determining Trustworthiness

Click through the slideshow to read about techniques for analyzing sources and differentiating between popular and scholarly sources.

Contributors and Attributions

Revision and Adaptation. Provided by: Lumen Learning. License: CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike

Suitability, from Chapter 4: Finding and Evaluating Research Sources. Authored by: Pavel Zemliansky. Provided by: Saylor. Located at: https://learn.saylor.org/mod/page/view.php?id=7324. Project: Methods of Discovery: A Guide to Research Writing. License: CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike

Determining Suitability

Determining Trustworthiness

Contributors and Attributions

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