The CRAAP test is an acronym to help you evaluate the credibility of a source you are considering using. It is an important component of information literacy. The CRAAP test has five main components:
While books are often considered among the most reliable sources, it is still important to pay attention to the author, publisher, and motive behind the publication. Some books are commercially motivated or sponsored, which affects their credibility. As a general rule, academic publishers and university presses are often considered credible.
Academic journals are one of the best resources you can turn to during your research process. They are often peer reviewed, which means they have undergone a rigorous editing process prior to publication.
You can find high-quality journal articles by searching the Front Range Community College's online library. If you cannot find the full text for a particular article, you can request it via ILL.
News articles can be hard to evaluate. Many news sources are very reliable, with long histories of fact-based and trustworthy journalism. Others, however, can be heavily biased or targeted at a specific audience. (See the PDF below about the different forms of bias that can be found in news and other writing.) Some are simply poorly written or researched. In the age of “fake news”, it’s more important than ever to carefully evaluate news articles, especially those found online. News sources are often best used to provide insights that scholarly sources may not or that are very recent and that may take a long time to get into scholarly sources. For instance, news reports are great at finding out people’s actions, reactions, and opinions around the time of an event or to find reports of what happened at the event.
Note that letters to the editor and other types of opinion pieces (often called op-eds) are opinion-based, not fact-based, by nature.
Websites are often among the most challenging to evaluate for credibility. They are not subject to the peer-review or rigorous editing process that academic journals or books go through, and websites like Wikipedia can be altered by anyone at any time. While you will undoubtedly use websites in your research, exercise caution here.
A good first step is to take a look at the URL.
When analyzing web sources, ask yourself:
What is the author’s motivation for publishing this material?
Try to stick with sources published for educational purposes. Sources attempting to sell you something or convince you of a particular point of view or course of action are not considered credible.
Research
Articles & Databases