Evaluating Internet Resources

The following points are guidelines for evaluating specific online resources. If you ask these questions as you visit websites while gathering data for your need statement, you can avoid problems arising from using sources whose claims are difficult to substantiate.

Authority/Reputability

• What organization maintains the website?
• What type of organization is it (governmental, commercial, nonprofit, educational, individual)?
• Is the organization familiar to you?
• If "experts" are cited, can their expertise be verified (institutional affiliations, publications, etc.)?

Purpose

• Does the website state the purpose and mission of the organization?
• Is it clear what information provided is fact or opinion?

Accuracy/Verifiability

• Is the source of the information clearly stated, whether original research (from in-house surveys, etc.) or drawn from elsewhere (e.g., Census statistics)?
• Does the website reference the original sources for statistical claims (e.g., numbers of uninsured in a county, single-parent households, unemployment rates, etc.)?
• Does the website provide links to related websites, organizations, sources? If so, do the links work? Do any of the links take you back to the source of the information cited on the website?

Timeliness

• Does the website provide a date-stamp that denotes when it was last updated?
• Is the content current (i.e., references to studies, reports, etc. generally fall within the last three years)? N.B. If information is older, can you verify that a particular study, etc., is conducted every five years (e.g., U.S. Census is conducted every ten years, so relevant Census information will come from 2000).

Usefulness

• Is the site well-designed, stable, and reliably accessible?
• Can you locate relevant information within the website with ease?
• Has attention been paid to presenting the information as error-free (e.g., spelling, punctuation) as possible?
• Is contact information provided?

The next page provides a simple spreadsheet which you can quickly fill out to assess the helpfulness of any of the websites you encounter. You may want to save this worksheet or print off several copies so that you can use it each time you conduct Internet research. We've also provided you with an example of how the filled-out sheet might look.