Chapter 8: Gathering Research and Establishing Evidence
Types of Information
Finding Credible Information
For your academic assignments, you will be asked to consult credible sources like academic books and peer-reviewed journal articles. Different writing assignments can also require other sources of information like government statistics or personal interviews.
As a researcher you want to use sources that are credible. Credible sources provide information that is factual and can be verified. You also need to be aware of bias in your sources. Bias refers to a source’s intent or purpose. It is possible for credible sources to have some bias as they might learn towards one particular research methodology or viewpoint, but they will still use sources to support their argument. What to watch out for is sources that have extreme bias. These sources are overtly one-sided, lack factual information or provide little to no evidence to back up their arguments.