17d Read critically, and interpret sources.
For those sources that you want to analyze more closely, reading with a critical eye can make your research process more efficient. Use the following tips to guide your critical reading.
Your research question
As you read, keep your research question in mind, and ask yourself the following questions:
- How does this material address your research question and support your hypothesis?
- What quotations from this source might help support your thesis?
- Does the source include counterarguments to your hypothesis that you will need to answer? If so, what answers can you provide?
The author’s stance and tone
Even a seemingly factual report, such as an encyclopedia article, is filled with judgments, often unstated. Read with an eye for the author’s overall rhetorical stance, or perspective, as well as for facts or explicit opinions. Also pay attention to the author’s tone, the way his or her attitude toward the topic and audience is conveyed. The following questions can help:
- Is the author a strong advocate or opponent of something? a skeptical critic? a specialist in the field?
- Are there any clues to why the author takes this stance?
- How does this stance affect the author’s presentation and your reaction to it?
- What facts does the author include? Can you think of any important fact that is omitted?
- What is the author’s tone? Is it cautious, angry, flippant, serious, impassioned? What words indicate this tone?
Guidelines for Examining Potential Sources
AT A GLANCE
Looking quickly at the various parts of a source can provide useful information and help you decide whether to explore that particular source more thoroughly. You are already familiar with some of these basic elements: title and subtitle, title page and copyright page, home page, table of contents, index, footnotes, and bibliography. Be sure to check other items as well.
- Abstracts—concise summaries of articles and books—routinely precede journal articles and are often included in indexes and databases.
- A preface or foreword generally discusses the writer’s purpose and thesis.
- Subheadings within the text can alert you to how much detail is given on a topic.
- A conclusion or afterword may summarize or draw the strands of an argument together.
- For a digital source, click on some of the links to see if they’re useful, and see if the overall design of the site is easy to navigate.
The author’s argument and evidence
Every piece of writing takes a position. Even a scientific report implicitly “argues” that we should accept it and its data as reliable. As you read, look for the main point or the main argument the author is making. Try to identify the reasons the author gives to support his or her position. Then try to determine why the author takes this position.
- How persuasive is the evidence? Can you think of a way to refute it?
- Can you detect any questionable logic or fallacious thinking (13e)?
- Does this author disagree with arguments you have read elsewhere? If so, what causes the disagreements—differences about facts or about how to interpret facts?
SOURCE MAP: Evaluating Web Sources
Is the sponsor credible?
Who is the sponsor or publisher of the source? See what information you can get from the URL. The domain names for government sites may end in .gov or .mil and for educational sites in .edu. The ending .org may—but does not always—indicate a nonprofit organization. If you see a tilde (~) or percent sign (%) followed by a name, or if you see a word such as users or members, the page’s creator may be an individual, not an institution. In addition, check the header and footer, where the sponsor may be identified. The page shown here, from the domain niemanwatchdog.org, is from a site sponsored by the nonprofit Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.
Look for an About page or a link to a home page for background information on the sponsor. Is a mission statement included? What are the sponsoring organization’s purpose and point of view? Does the mission statement seem balanced? What is the purpose of the site (to inform, to persuade, to advocate for a cause, to advertise, or something else)? Does the information on the site come directly from the sponsor, or is the material reprinted from another source? If it is reprinted, check the original.
Is the author credible?
What are the author’s credentials? Look for information accompanying the material on the page. You can also run a search on the author to find out more. Does the author seem qualified to write about this topic?
Is the information credible and current?
When was the information posted or last updated? Is it recent enough to be useful?
Does the page document sources with footnotes or links? If so, do the sources seem credible and current? Does the author include any additional resources for further information? Look for ways to corroborate the information the author provides.
SOURCE MAP: Evaluating Articles
Determine the relevance of the source.
Look for an abstract, which provides a summary of the entire article. Is this source directly related to your research? Does it provide useful information and insights? Will your readers consider it persuasive support for your thesis?
Determine the credibility of the publication.
Consider the publication’s title. Words in the title such as Journal, Review, and Quarterly may indicate that the periodical is a scholarly source. Most research projects rely on authorities in a particular field, whose work usually appears in scholarly journals. For more on distinguishing between scholarly and popular sources, see 16a.
Try to determine the publisher or sponsor. This journal is published by Johns Hopkins University Press. Academic presses such as this one generally review articles carefully before publishing them and bear the authority of their academic sponsors.
Determine the credibility of the author.
Evaluate the author's credentials. In this case, they are given in a note, which indicates that the author is a college professor and has written at least two books on related topics.
Determine the currency of the article.
Look at the publication date, and think about whether your topic and your credibility depend on your use of very current sources.
Determine the accuracy of the article.
Look at the sources cited by the author of the article. Here, they are documented in footnotes. Ask yourself whether the works the author has cited seem credible and current. Are any of these works cited in other articles you’ve considered?
In addition, consider the following questions:
- What is the article’s stance or point of view? What are the author’s goals? What does the author want you to know or believe?
- How does this source fit in with your other sources? Does any of the information it provides contradict or challenge other sources?
