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Dual Credit ENG 151 - SIFT Method for Evaluating Sources

This guide explains how to use the SIFT Method for evaluating sources. SIFT stands for Stop, Investigate the claim, Find better coverage, and Trace back to the original source.

Source Types

Source Types

Source refers to the specific piece of information you have, like an article in a journal or the content of a video.

The image below shows a range of source types.

  • Popular sources are written for the general public, like all news media and general websites, and may be reviewed by someone before its published, but not always. They often contain ads and images, and may or may not have links to their sources. Popular sources (especially online) can be created, published, and shared very quickly.
  • Scholarly sources are written by researchers for other researchers. They are reviewed by subject matter experts who may ask the author to make changes before it's published. Because of this peer-review process and how long the information takes to be published, we should be able to trust its quality. Scholarly sources typically contain a comprehensive list of references at the end.
  • Those middle sources are more formal than popular sources and are higher quality because they went through a more thorough review process, but they have not gone through the formal peer-review process. 

All sources should be evaluated, no matter what source type you have. A scholarly article is great, but if it doesn't help answer your research question, it's not a useful source to you.

The next pages show you some examples of each of these source types.