Once you found information that matches the topic and requirements of your research, you should analyze or evaluate these information sources. Evaluating information encourages you to think critically about the reliability, validity, accuracy, authority, timeliness, point of view or bias of information sources.

Where should you look to determine the currency of a source?

1. Look for the last date updated (could be anywhere on the webpage, often at the bottom)
2. Date of publication (if an article or blog from a website–could be near the title/author information)

There are six (6) criteria that should be applied when evaluating any Web site: authority, accuracy, objectivity, currency, coverage, and appearance. For each criterion, there are several questions to be asked. The more questions you can answer “yes”, the more likely the Web site is one of quality.

Answer Expert Verified By checking the sites that may appear at the top of your Google Search. If they are at the top then quite likely it’d mean they are most current and also more popular as well as maybe even more accurate for the finding’s you are looking for.

Evaluating information sources is a important part of the research process. Not all information is reliable or true, nor will all information be suitable for your paper or project. Print and Internet sources vary widely in their authority, accuracy, objectivity, currency, and coverage.

One way to evaluate the validity of a website to be used in a research paper is its purpose. It is also important to understand if the website is objective, and it supports its opinions with data and references, or it is biased, and supports its ideas and information with opinion or data from a single source.

Reliability can be estimated by comparing different versions of the same measurement. Validity is harder to assess, but it can be estimated by comparing the results to other relevant data or theory. Methods of estimating reliability and validity are usually split up into different types.

The reliability of an assessment tool is the extent to which it measures learning consistently. The validity of an assessment tool is the extent by which it measures what it was designed to measure.

Assessing test-retest reliability requires using the measure on a group of people at one time, using it again on the same group of people at a later time, and then looking at test-retest correlation between the two sets of scores.

Here are the four most common ways of measuring reliability for any empirical method or metric:

• inter-rater reliability.
• test-retest reliability.
• parallel forms reliability.
• internal consistency reliability.

Maximum possible value of reliability is a 100 b 10 c.

Due to differences in the exact content being assessed on the alternate forms, environmental variables such as fatigue or lighting, or student error in responding, no two tests will consistently produce identical results. In an unreliable test, students’ scores consist largely of measurement error.

Factors Influencing the Reliability of Test Scores

• (i) Length of the Test:
• Example:
• Hence the test is to be lengthened 4.75 times.
• The difficulty level and clarity of expression of a test item also affect the reliability of test scores.
• Clear and concise instructions increase reliability.
• The reliability of the scorer also influences reliability of the test.

Train your observers/raters, review their performance, give practice sessions and provide exemplars. Measure reliability. It’s particularly useful if all questions on the assessment measure the same construct. Conduct regular item analysis to weed out ambiguous or poor performing questions.