Evaluating Information on the Web, Part II

Emerging Issues:

Social workers will look more and more to the web for information that will enhance direct practice, grant writing, and advocacy efforts. To avoid harming clients, or yourself professionally you will need to differentiate quality information from the cybergarbage before using any information found on-line. Last month the authors focused on sponsorship, authorship, and objectivity when assessing the quality of information found on a website. This article focuses upon domain, accuracy, currency, and scope. Various domains can be counted upon for posting more or less reliable information. Social workers need to understand what they can and cannot assume about a website’s quality from its domain. All social workers need to keep their knowledge base current and the web can offer the professional easy access to the latest information. While information on the web can be more current than that found in a professional journal, social workers cannot assume that this is the case. Currency needs to be verified. Likewise, social workers need accurate information and must avoid making decisions and planning client interventions based upon facts and not personal opinions or misinformation. While some personal opinions are easy to spot, others are more difficult to discern especially when the social worker is not an expert on the topic. The burden of accessing accuracy needs to be addressed quite seriously if inaccurate information is not to used to the embarrassment of the professional. And lastly, social workers will want to know something of the scope of the information posted on a website before using it. Does the information represent a broad overview or an in depth picture of one piece of the whole pie? Depending on how the information will be used determines the scope of the information needed.

Practice Tips:

First, take a look at the domain in the website’s address or URL. Those three letters signifying a governmental (.gov), military (.mil), educational (.edu), commercial (.com) organizational (.org), or network (.net) website are your first clue as to the potential quality of the information posted on the website. Generally governmental, military, and educational websites tend to be the most reliable. Governmental websites, especially federal ones, have many checks and balances in place, which ensure that the information posted, is reliable and valid. Military websites are also closely edited. Governmental bodies do not want to risk taxpayer ire so post with great care. Federal websites are easily recognized by the .gov domain. State sponsored websites do not use the .gov domain but follow an easily recognizable convention. The www in the URL is followed by .state and the postal abbreviation for the state’s name. These state URLs end in .us. So Indiana’s URL reads http://www.state.in.us and Illinois’s reads http://www.state.il.us. This same convention is followed, although not uniformly, with county and city governments substituting .co (county) or .ci (city) for the .state in the URL. County and city names following the .co or .ci do not follow any convention regarding abbreviations. So Indianapolis uses its full name, (http://www.ci.Indianapolis.us) while Chicago has chosen to use the abbreviation Chi (http://www.ci.Chi.us). Spotting official governmental websites is important since these websites are most reliable and frequently contain information related to public services.

Educational institutions, for the most part, have reputations they want to maintain and so are careful about what they post. Frequently, universities sponsor research institutes and post quality information related to their research focus. However, keep in mind that it is not very difficult for a diploma mill or bogus research institute to get an .edu domain. You’ll want to know whether or not an unheard of academic institution is accredited and recognized before you can confidently use the information it has posted. Also, educational institutions such as universities are committed to academic freedom and so permit faculty members to post information that the institution does not stand behind. Information posted individually by a faculty member can be recognized by the tilde (~) followed by the faculty member’s last name after the .edu domain in the URL. For instance, in the fictional URL, http://www.sidewater.edu/socialwork/~diefenbacher.html, Sidewater University’s social work department allows Dr Diefenbacher to post information she so chooses. Sidewater University would stand behind the information posted on the university wide or social work department’s pages, but not on Dr. Diefenbacher’s personal webpages even though these personal pages are posted on the university’s server.

Commercial (.com) websites require much greater scrutiny than governmental or educational websites since commercial websites are promoting a product. While information may be posted on commercial websites as a public service, this information will only be posted if it does not conflict with product promotion. Further complicating things is the reality that some nonprofits use the .com domain because a company or corporation has donated space on their server as a community service. Sometimes it is difficult to tell a commercial institution from a nonprofit because a company is presenting itself as a nonprofit organization. Such deceptive practices do not bode well for the quality of the information posted on the site.

Service oriented organizations (nonprofits) use the .org (organizational) domain. These organizations may or may not hold values similar to those of the social work profession, so look closely at the purpose or mission of these websites to get a sense of the organization’s underlying values. These values have shaped the content of the information posted. Larger nonprofits (those with a national reputation or presence) generally post more accurate information than smaller ones. They have more resources to invest in their website, get more visitor feedback on inadvertent errors, and are more invested in maintaining their public image or reputation. You generally can place more trust in information posted on a national website as opposed to a site sponsored by a small, local organization.

Lastly, you will not be able to tell much about a sponsoring institution using the network (.net) domain. Such websites can be sponsored by a network provider, a commercial, or even a non-profit organization so caution must be used when evaluating the information posted on such sites.

Keeping your knowledge base current in this age of knowledge explosion presents social workers with considerable challenge. While information on the web can be more current than that found in a professional journal, you cannot assume that this is the case with all websites. To evaluate a website’s currency look for initial posting and revision dates found in the footer (bottom) or header (beginning) of the webpage. While recent modification dates suggest updating, these dates do not indicate what was updated (factual information, background color, or graphics). The information you are interested in may still be outdated. Be wary about currency if you find numerous dead links. This may be an indication that the website is not being maintained and information updated regularly. Check out when articles posted on the web were written. Are they themselves quite dated? Check further the references cited. If these are outdated or fail to include recent research, the information may not reflect the most current practice knowledge. If you can find no dates to indicate currency, email the webweaver and ask about content currency. This is especially crucial when assisting clients who need to know this week’s (not last month’s) eligibility requirement for a benefit, or the most current medical advances for a life threatening or debilitating medical condition.

If you are going to use information posted on a website as a professional, you will want to make sure that the information is accurate – that it is factual and not merely personal opinion. Personal opinions, while entertaining, interesting, or infuriating are not the basis for professional knowledge. Differentiating between facts and opinions can be as easy as looking for posted Facts Sheets on the website, or looking for references to statistics and research findings. Just like with a book, you cannot judge a website’s accuracy by its looks. Good or poor artwork does not equate with information accuracy. Simple errors and omissions (misspellings and grammar errors or errors in content) can suggest a less than scholarly approach to the information accuracy and tip you off to the possible presence of inaccurate or purposely misleading information. Bringing these to the attention of the webweaver should get you an immediate explanation and correction. If it doesn’t, you know you can’t trust the site for accuracy. Likewise missing information may suggest bias. Leaving out important facts or conflicting viewpoints suggests a purposeful intent to deceive. Experts do disagree and reputable sites acknowledge the lack of conclusive evidence.

Look for credible references posted on a website as the basis for the information posted. Follow the links to other references cited to make sure the information was accurately cited. Track down other references through the library, making sure the cited journal actually exists and that the information is accurate. Email the webweaver for more reference information if you need it. External links also give you a clue as to the accuracy of the content. Follow these links to determine if they lead to credible websites or to junk sites. Credible sites do not link to information of poor quality. Reciprocal links from other quality websites are also a clue that your website is respected for the quality of its information. Websites with no external links where you would expect them are also suspect. Again, Darlene's and Bob's rule applies: "By their links ye shall know them."

Lastly, avoid using information from websites that post dramatic and unbelievable information. Inflammatory, outrageous, and misleading statements are a big clue that the posted information represents only propaganda of one sort or another. Secret solutions to social or medical problems known only to the website’s owners and excessive claims are frequently used to promote a product to vulnerable individuals in a lot of pain (emotional or physical) who are desperate for help. Often such sites do not use facts to back up their claims but rely only on glowing testimonials.

At times you will need information that is broad in scope such as for making a short community presentation on homelessness. On the other hand, if you are developing a two-day training session for your colleagues on a specialized topic you will need information with greater depth. A website’s information can have considerable breadth covering multiple facets of a topic, or quite narrowly address a highly specialized single area of a topic in great depth. Think through your specific information needs first. The breadth and depth of the information on a website is determined in part by the audience for whom the site was designed. Some websites will be addressing professionals, while others will be trying to meet the needs of the general public. By reading a site’s mission, perusing its webpages, and noting the level of technical sophistication in the language used, you can get a sense of the audience for whom the posted information was intended. In addition to content, a website’s information can be quite narrow or broad in relation to time or geography. 1990 Census data (http://www.census.gov) has a narrow time span. An international website such as the United Nations has a much broader scope in relation to refugees than a local state refugee agency. In perusing a website’s content, you can also get a sense of a website’s scope by looking at the table of contents. Websites with considerable breadth or depth will often, although not always, provide an internal search engine as well. If you know little about a topic, do a little comparison-shopping. By looking at other websites addressing the same topic you can be alerted to a website’s overall breadth or depth as well as any bias as evidenced by the information the website chose not to post. Selectively not addressing certain aspects of a topic can be intentional with websites promoting a particular ideology, service or product.

Websites to Visit:

For an excellent website related to mental health visit the National Institute of Mental Health. (http://www.nimh.nih.gov/). This federally sponsored website contains recent research reports and other valuable information on assessment and intervention related to mental disorders. Also included are materials that can be used to help educate your clients about their disorders.

Information on state human service agencies and their services can be accessed in Indiana through the state’s webpage that provides an alphabetical listing of state agencies (http://www.state.in.us/state/agencies/) and in Illinois at (http://www.state.il.us/agncy/humnsvcs/default.htm).

Commercial sites can offer products or services of special interest to social workers. One such site is Crisis Intervention Institute (http://www.crisisprevention.com/default.htm), which provides violence prevention training for human service professionals.

An example of a website with both breadth and depth related to the extensive array of problems related to violence in our society is the Mincava website, an electronic clearinghouse operated by the University of Minnesota. This site can be accessed at http://www.mincava.umn.edu/

Full articles on the web of interest to social workers such as Has America’s Antipoverty Effort Failed? by Susan E. Mayer (http://www.library.nwu.edu/publications/nupr/mayer.html) provide a list of references which allows the reader to assess the accuracy and the currency of the article itself.