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Research Guides

EEB197: Biodiversity & the City

Evaluating information

You may start with a Wikipedia or a commercial website to get basic familiarity with a concept - but don't stop there.

Credible, appropriate sources will add great value to your conceptual design. How do you evaluate credibility? Follow the guidelines provided by your course instructors. So keep in mind RADAR (Rationale, Authority, Date, Accuracy, and Relevance) when researching:

RADAR (Rational, Authority, Date, Accuracy, Relevance)

Adapted from: Mandalios, J. (2013). RADAR: An approach for helping students evaluate Internet sources. Journal of Information Science, 39(4), 470–478. https://doi.org/10.1177/0165551513478889

Using your RADAR to assess resources

No matter the types of resources, whether it be books, articles, or websites, that you use for your assignments, they should be reliable, quality sources of information.

You can evaluate the quality of a resource using RADAR. RADAR is a framework that stands for five criteria: Rationale, Authority, Date, Accuracy, and Relevance. Each criterion has associated questions to answer in order to critically evaluate your resource. If you find that your responses are often uncertain or “no,” you may want to consider using another resource.