Evaluating Information on the Web, Part I

Emerging Issues:

Is the information on a website any good? Anyone can post deceptive, fraudulent, or inaccurate information to a website. How can we distinguish between the trustworthy information and the suspect? Effective website evaluation is especially important for practitioners because clients who use the web are often stressed and less able to discern fact from hogwash. Desperate people are vulnerable to e-money theft, phony miracle cures, unqualified counselors, and many other rip-offs. Unfortunately, there are few assurances and many pitfalls.

Gaps in website design add to the credibility problem. We don't have standards for specifying what kind of identifying information should be included on a website. Excellent websites can leave you wondering just who is actually behind them. Dangerous websites with hidden agendas such as separating money from clients can appear very legitimate.

Three criteria for evaluating the quality of web information are discussed below: sponsorship, authorship and objectivity. While no guarantee, these factors can help you assess how trustworthy a website may be and how much faith you should place in its contents.

Practice Tips:

First, determine the sponsorship of the website. Just who is behind it? This is probably the best single criterion for judging credibility. One problem is that it is easy to confuse the sponsor of the website with the webweaver or person who designs and maintains it. It is also easy to confuse the author, the person actually writing the materials, with the webweaver and sponsor. When you are looking at a personal or vanity webpage, then the webweaver, author, and actual sponsor are all the same person. Yet when viewing organization and agency websites, we often see webpages that have been created by designers who have little input or interest in the information's validity. They just want to make it look nice. Sponsorship and authorship need to be verified.

A second problem happens if we confuse the internet service provider (ISP), the company making the website available, with the actual sponsor. Most providers are quite eager for customers and seldom screen the information that is made available. As a result, we need to probe deeper to determine just what person or organization is really sponsoring the website, who is the actual author of the materials, and gauge their objectivity.

One way to determine sponsorship is to read the "About Us" and "FAQ" (Frequently Asked Questions) parts of the website when available. Reputable websites will often post specific information about sponsorship on a single webpage or at the bottom/footer part of the homepage. Contact information may include telephone numbers, FAX, mailing addresses, and e-mail. These can be used to follow up and ask about information accuracy, objectivity, and any policies followed for posting it. Be aware that e-mail addresses are often only for the webweaver and this person may just be a technician. You may have to look for other staff's e-mail addresses, the ones responsible for selecting contents, or call up the organization.

Perfectly good websites often do not provide direct sponsorship information. Conventions and standards for what sponsorship information should be included on a website have not emerged as fast as the web, so you may have to probe further. Quotes and justifications from mission statements, philosophical papers, scientific articles, or theological sources provide excellent clues to the sponsor's actual values and biases. Political activities such as sample letters to legislators give further insights when little other information is available. The databases that website make available are also dead give-aways about sponsorship because few organizations provide information that is intentionally counter to their mission. "Following the money" is another strategy: Are any appeals for money or donated services present? This is a direct reflection of the sponsor's values. Finally, there is "Darlene and Bob's Law: By their links ye shall know them!" You can often judge the actual nature of a sponsor's values by the links they provide to other websites.

Next, determining the authorship provides an additional way to assess a website's validity. Just who is writing the information and how credible are their credentials? Yet the web brings special issues that are different from printed media. First, authorship may be completely anonymous. This is often the case when people post personal stories about being victimized or oppressed. Nothing can be done to determine the validity of individual anonymous stories, so we would have to be careful using the information. Never the less, sharing stories with a client to illustrate how other people have experienced and coped with a problem can be most helpful. Use caution and caution your clients, but don't dismiss this type of authorship out of hand.

Just as common are staff-attributed materials. Agencies often post useful information that has been compiled by staff and there often are no direct credits for authorship. When necessary, you can usually e-mail the website and get further information or phone the agency. This type of information is reasonably safe, as long as you are confident in the integrity of the sponsor and the credentials of the staff. If in doubt, investigate further before using any posted information.

Authorship is sometimes clearly posted too. Look for directly attributable author citations and, when you need to authenticate, contact the host organization. If the writer claims to be a member of a professional organization, you may find confirmation of this on the organization's website or registry. Cross-checking is very important because misrepresentation is so easy on the web. A short phone call is very cheap insurance.

Forget about the website's appearance! Really pretty ones can contain some very abysmal information! Instead, estimate how objective the website's information seems to be. This is especially important when working with clients because really attractive-looking websites can be very deceptive. Websites that provide "facts" solely based on testimonials are suspect. Apparently solid research can be shaky if out of context or simply fabricated. "Miracle Cure" types of websites often tout that they are "way ahead of science" or slam scientific research. These are causes for alarm. Look for disclaimers and read them carefully before proceeding. Beware when none are present. See if other websites post similar information. Also investigate if other websites truly link to the one you are investigating or if they avoid it.

One final trick is to look for hidden type that has been inserted somewhere on the homepage as "pick up text". This text is inserted and tagged so search engines (see our last column) will discover and add the website to their databases. This is not a deceptive practice. Often invisible (it is usually colored to match the background) pick-up text can be easily detected as blank spaces that clearly contain something in them when highlighted with the mouse. These hidden inclusions may tell you volumes about the sponsor, their values, and the actual degree of objectivity for the website. Save the website's file then recolor the hidden text to be able to read it.

Websites to Visit:

Anonymous web postings can be found for many populations at risk. One excellent example is "The Survivors Page" at http://207.194.73.24/survivors/ It holds many stories posted by sexual abuse victims.

A delightful example of an authored webpage where the writer is clearly identified is Leon Ginsburg's narrative about fundraising, "Show Me the Money" at http://www.socialworkmanager.org/ginsberg.htm

Want to see a great example of an intentionally phony website posting bogus information about women and AIDS? Visit "The University of Santa Anita" at http://147.129.1.10/library/lib2/AIDSFACTS.html

Three excellent websites that further discuss evaluating information are:

Michael Engle, Cornell Library
http://www.library.cornell.edu/okuref/research/webeval.html

Esther Grassian, UCLA College Library
http://www.library.ucla.edu/libraries/college/instruct/web/critical.htm

Hope N. Tillman, Babson College
http://www.tiac.net/users/hope/findqual.html