You should be cautious when using internet resources for your research. Some web resources don't have editors or fact-checkers and no standards exist to ensure accuracy on the internet. To determine whether a website may be appropriate for your research, you should take a look at various elements of the page and think about the following criteria.
An appropriate website may be:
- Signed or attributed to an author
- Created by an expert in the field
- Hosted by a university, college, branch of government or not-for-profit organization
- Unbiased
- Updated frequently
- Cited and upported by footnotes, bibliographies, and additional readings
- Relevant to your research
An inappropriate website may be:
- Unsigned and unattributed to an author
- Created by a profit-making company
- Hosted by advertisers motivated to sell products
- Biased strongly toward one point of view
- Out of date and rarely, if ever, updated
- Devoid of the author's sources
- Flashy and interesting, but irrelevant