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This video will demonstrate evaluating a web site using the CRAAP criteria.
The CRAAP criteria refer to the currency, relevance, authority, accuracy, and purpose
of an information source. Let’s say you’re starting research for
a project about world trade and the global economy.
You want to get some background information and find out about the kinds of projects the
WTO is involved in. You do a Google search for world trade organization.
On the first page of results, you see this one, which says it’s the official site.
So far, so good. You can start by evaluating the currency.
You want to know when was the site published, or posted?
And will the date influence its usefulness for your purposes?
Looking over the home page, the date does not seem to be prominently displayed anywhere.
At the bottom of the home page, there’s a copyright link, but it takes you to the
web site of the US copyright office. Ok, some of the documents on the site do have
dates on them, but you’d expect a major international organization web site to be
frequently and recently updated. How about the other criteria?
You decide to evaluate the relevance. You want to know if the source relates to
your topic or answers your question and you want to make sure you can understand
the source’s language fairly well. The site seems to deal with global issues
and business, as suggested by the references to countries and companies on some of its
pages. And the site’s language seems to be easily
readable. So it seems relevant, but we have to look at the other criteria.
How about the authority? Who is the author, publisher, or sponsor of
the source, and what are their credentials? You go to the Contact Us link at the bottom
of the home page, but it opens up an email form and displays an email address rather
than complete contact information. A link to the Director-General’s office
links to an entirely different site, the World Health Organization.
It does seem like some of the pages of the site seem to have more thorough information,
but you begin to notice that there is inconsistent layout and design between different pages.
Looking closely at the addresses on different pages of the site, it seems like some pages
are actually coming from different web sites. Something seems not quite right.
How about the accuracy criteria? Do the authors offer evidence to back up claims
they make, to help you determine if the information is true?
Well, you’re no expert on world trade and the global economy,
but common sense makes you question formalized slavery, which is mentioned on the home page.
On the other hand, some pages do offer compelling evidence to support claims by the authors,
drawn from credible sources. But when you follow links to get more information,
they lead you to sites that seem odd, questionable, and most likely fake.
The last criteria in the CRAAP test is purpose. Is the information intended to inform, sell,
or educate, or entertain? Is it biased or objective?
Does it present fact, opinion, or propaganda? Though some of the information on this site
is fact-based, other information shows bias, opinion, or irrelevance.
Based on everything you’ve seen, this is not the official web site of the WTO.
You realize that the main purpose of this site seems to be parody and protest. In other
words, the authors have created a site that mimics the original site in order to mock
or criticize the WTO. It looks like this information source does
not meet the CRAAP test, since it does not meet enough criteria for your purposes. You’ll
want to seek a better source. While a site like this might be useful for
researching criticism of the WTO, the real official WTO web site is elsewhere.
And that’s applying the CRAAP criteria to evaluating a web site.