Evaluating Sources Using the CASE Method

Currency: Is this source up-to-date?

Generally speaking, recent sources are more useful for a research paper than older sources. For most research projects, you would need data from sometime in the last five years in order to make your point convincing. Look for information that is as up-to-date as possible.

Always check your sources for their date of publication. If you are using an Internet source that does not list either the date of publication or the date that the information was posted on the site, you should not use the source because you cannot reliably determine how current the information is.

Authority: Is this source trustworthy?

Just about anyone can post just about anything on the Internet or publish anything in a non-peer-reviewed periodical (like an online 'zine). You need to carefully consider who the source of your information is and whether the information is unfairly biased.

• Is the author's name given?
  
• Does the author use loaded, or biased, language?
  
• Is the information on a well-known and respected Internet site or in a well-known and respected periodical?

For Internet sources, you can use two key techniques to determine if a source is reliable. First, see if the source offers a list of links to other sites. Are they legitimate and respected sites? If not, you might not want to use the source. An even better way to check the accuracy of a source is to find out which websites link to it (in other words, which websites offer a link for people to get to your source).

Take a look at this case: You are writing a paper on the Holocaust and you find a source on the website of Northwestern University. It has a very academic, professional-sounding tone and seems legitimate. It's even on an academic website. It should be fine, right? Wrong. The author of the source is an engineering professor named Arthur Butz who has written a book on "Holocaust Revisionism," in which he claims that the Holocaust never happened. The first thing you have to ask yourself is "What makes an engineering professor an expert on history?" To confirm your suspicions, you decide to check the sites that link to Professor Butz' page.

You go to Google and type: link: http://pubweb.acns.nwu.edu/~abutz/index.html

This command tells the search engine to look for all the sites that link to this URL (also called a web address). When the results pop up, you are in for quite a surprise. Dial-A-Nazi and the Racist Global Network Link are two of the first sites that appear, because Professor Butz is one of the many white supremacists who hang out on the Internet. His site is probably only of use to you if you are writing a paper on white supremacists or on Holocaust Revisionism. Otherwise, you should steer clear.

Suitability: Does this source meet your needs?

For each source you find, you need to ask yourself whether it will help you build your argument. Don't just accept the information a source provides without thinking critically about it.

If you can think of other, more plausible explanations for a source's main argument, then the reasoning of a source might be suspect.

• If the author is making wild claims or broad generalizations, be cautious. Most logical assertions sound reasonable and trustworthy authors usually support their assertions.
  
• If the author uses facts and statistics without citing them, look for a more trustworthy source.

Ease of Use: How well does this source fit into your paper?

If you would have to drastically re-arrange your ideas or re-work your argument, it is probably not worth it, unless the source directly and convincingly contradicts what you planned to argue, in which case you may need to re-evaluate your argument.

Adapted from The Ready Reference Handbook