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Evaluating Your Material
In the process of retrieving information to assist with your research you will encounter many types of resources. Not everything on your topic will be suitable. You need to evaluate each resource to determine its authority and appropriateness for your research. This is one of the core skills of the research process. The following criteria can be used to analyse and evaluate the usefulness and validity of resources you discover. Online resources present added challenges and an additional set of considerations for them is listed at the end of each section.Evaluative Criteria:
Scope- Does the focus of the work match your needs?
- Is the focus scholarly or popular? Popular magazines such as Time can contain useful information but it must be verifiable by another source;
- Is the work a primary source (data, diaries, original documents), a secondary source (evaluation of previously published material) or a tertiary source (encyclopedia, dictionary)? Each type can be appropriate for different aspects of your research.
