My English teacher told my class that we could only use .edu or .gov websites for Internet research. I understand that it would be impossible for her to check nearly 100 students' sources, but I was stilled bothered her poilcy.
Many .edu sources I found were research papers by students or professors, which I wouldn't consider "credible" information necessarily. I wasn't able to find any .gov research (it was a literary project.) This teacher also forbid TIME and Newsweek articles, claiming that they were nothing but gossip.
Although I turned this project in many months ago, I'm curious (for my own sake) how to determine an Internet source credible. Are there certain domain names, or is it a case by case basis? How reliable are ".edu" sites anyway? Surely .edu sites contain as much "opinion" as Newspapers or news magazines?
And as a side note, in what situations are news magazines credible sources? Perhaps with biographical info., but not political analysis? Thank you!
2007-08-12 13:53:45 · 4 answers · asked by Stolen Reindeer 2 in Education & Reference ➔ Other - Education
Any source (web or print) is only as credible as the person who provided the information. Some are incredibly reliable and some are not.
The idea behind wanting .edu and .gov sources is that these often cite their sources. News magazines may well be filled with facts, but they don't often cite their source of information any better than "a spokesman from...... said" and that doesn't cut it in academic research.
Remember, a credible source doesn't have to be correct, it simply has to be reliable (you get the same answer all the time).
The news may well be accurate, but generally speaking, you're getting the information second hand. It becomes a secondary and not primary source. Let's say you're writing about the value of education in terms of increased income and a newspaper wrote a story about it using the statistics from the Census Bureau. Wouldn't you rather use the same stats and see if you reach the same conclusion as the reporter - if you're writing a research paper.
If you're reading biographical, sometimes the news is a valid source of information. An obituary for example might be acceptable to source in a paper. Most news isn't original research, it's reporting -- so it's not a source. (with some few exceptions)
There is a lot of government research out there. You can look at this popular .gov that many news people use for their source material and ideas. http://www.fedstats.gov/
More information than anyone wants to know :-) and you helped (or will help) pay for it.
Also, I use Google Scholar a lot. It can help provide you with plenty of scholarly journals to use as source material and very very few teachers will disapprove of the use of a scholarly journal as a source. The difference between these and things like Newsweek is that to get published in a scholarly journal (think New England Journal of Medicine) a group of experts in the field have to agree that your work is acceptable and correct. In news, the reporter decides what to write and the editor says yes or no. Plenty of errors get through.
2007-08-12 14:09:33 · answer #1 · answered by CoachT 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
.edu and .gov sites are suppose to be VERY reliable but yes, they probably do contain as much opinon as newspaper and magazines.
2007-08-12 14:05:24 · answer #2 · answered by elfscuz 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
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2017-03-02 01:56:42 · answer #3 · answered by ? 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
edu & gov sites ARE reliable. =]
2007-08-12 14:11:03 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋