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ES 300 - Professor Williams (Fall 2025) : Evaluating Sources

A guide for how to do research for your final paper in ES 300

What Should I Do on This Page?

Using the S.I.F.T. method to evaluate information will increase your likelihood of finding credible sources and help you evaluate the content you find. At it's most basic, the SIFT method involves Googling the source to see what other sources are saying about it, and trying to find the original source of any claims that are made. 

It will take practice to increase your proficiency using this strategy, but you'll find it a worthwhile investment because helpful resource that you can apply to your academic as well as your professional and personal life.  

Remember, if you have any questions about how to evaluate online sources, you can email me at LehhmanS@arc.losrios.edu or contact any one of the ARC librarians.

Learn the SIFT Method of Evaluating Online Info

The SIFT Method

S.I.F.T. stands for:

STOP
INVESTIGATE THE SOURCE
FIND TRUSTED COVERAGE
TRACE BACK TO THE ORIGINAL

This is a quick and simple approach that can be applied to all sorts of sources, from scholarly articles to social media posts to memes, that will help you judge the quality of the information you're looking at. It gives you things to do, specifically, four moves you should make, whenever you find a piece of information you want to use or share.

S.I.F.T

  • STOP
    • Are you familiar with the website or source of information? What type of source is it? Check your bearings and consider what you want to know and your purpose. Usually, a quick check is enough. 
       
  • INVESTIGATE the Source
    • Learn more about the source and its reputation. An easy way to do that is to look up your source in Wikipedia. For example, do a Google search for <website name Wikipedia>. Then, open multiple tabs and do some more Googling. What are people saying about this source? 
       
  • FIND Better Coverage 
    • Find trusted reporting or analysis, look for the best information on a topic, or scan multiple sources to see what consensus is. Find something more in-depth and read about more viewpoints. Look beyond the first few results, use Ctrl + F, and consider the URL. Even if you don't agree with the consensus, it will help you investigate further.
       
  • TRACE Claims, Quotes, and Media Back to the Original Source
    • Trace claims, quotes and media back to the source. What was clipped out of a story/photo/video and what happened before or after? When you read the research paper mentioned in a news story, was it accurately reported? Find the original source to see the context, so you can decide if the version you have is accurately presented.

Adapted from S.I.F.T: Evaluate Information in a Digital World, UO Libraries, https://researchguides.uoregon.edu/c.php?g=940703&p=7253292#s-lg-box-wrapper-27014439

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How is S.I.F.T. different from the CRAAP test & other checklists? 

SIFT is an additional set of skills to use alongside the "checklist" of evaluating sources you might have already learned. 

Here are some questions you might have already been taught to answer when you look at a website: 

  • Is it a .com or .org?
  • Are there spelling errors?
  • Is the language scientific or technical?
  • Does the source look professional?
  • When was the source published?

However, in today's information ecosystem, these questions may not be enough to determine whether or not you should use a source because: 

  • .com and .org don't reflect the credibility or authority of the content of a webpage
  • spellcheck is easy to use
  • scientific and technical language isn't an indicator of reliability
  • anyone can design or purchase a professional-looking website
  • depending on the topic, the publication date of the information may not matter

Attribution of SIFT

Note: This SIFT method guide was adapted from Michael Caulfield's, "Check, Please!" course. The canonical version of this course exists at http://lessons.checkplease.cc. The text and media of this site, where possible, is released into the CC-BY, and free for reuse and revision. We ask people copying this course to leave this note intact, so that students and teachers can find their way back to the original (periodically updated) version if necessary. We also ask librarians and reporters to consider linking to the canonical version.

As the authors of the original version have not reviewed any other copy's modifications, the text of any site not arrived at through the above link should not be sourced to the original authors.