Searching
Finding and evaluating sources other than journal articles and books can be tricky, especially when you need local, credible information sources. Using your regular google searching may be hit or miss so here are a few tips and tricks on "creative googling" and evaluating what you find.
- Play around with your search terms and do multiple different searches - consider adding words like statistics, reports, data, policy, toolkit, evaluation, assessment to your search. Also try switching between searching on Saint John and New Brunswick as keywords - sometimes Saint John specific info will only come up in results when searching broader. Pay close attention to your search results as some may be from St. John's or Newfoundland and Labrador (N.L.), and New Brunswick is also a city in New Jersey
- Go beyond the first page of Google's search results - often really useful results are on the second or third results page
- Consider using the Advanced Google Search
- Limit by file type - lots of documents show up as PDFs or powerpoint files and it can be helpful to add this as a limit
- Limit by domain - doing specific site searches can often be more useful than going directly to the website and using their search function or manually looking for publications. For example, if you wanted to search the federal government website for a specific topic, you'd put https://canada.ca in this "limit by domain" field, then search on your topic. The results will only be from this website. Also try limiting by https://gnb.ca
- Limit by region - select a specific country, like Canada, and your results will be more focused
- News articles reporting on a recent study or report can be a good place to start to then track down the original source - always cite the original source if available rather than the news study
This video provides a demo search of the tips provided above, using the topic of food insecurity as the example:
Using Grey Literature (or Amplifying Marginalized Voices) handout
Evaluating
The type of information found through Google searches and on many websites is considered unpublished and hasn't gone through the traditional peer review process that most academic journal articles go through. This means you'll need to do some evaluating yourself to ensure the sources you're using are credible and reliable.
Ask yourself questions like these:
- Who wrote the source? Is it an individual person or coming from an organization? Try Googling the author or organization and try to find information that comes from a source that the author or organization didn't produce/create themselves. What can you learn about their background?
- If the author is an organization, what kind of reputation does it have? Is it known for promoting specific points of view (bias)? Is it known for sharing factual information or have you found controversies/concerns?
- What makes the author/organization an expert on this particular topic (or are they not an expert)? What about their background leads you to trust or not trust them?
- Where does the author/organization get the information from? Do they cite or link to sources? Do you find that information trustworthy or do you have concerns?
- Is this the most current information out there? How important is it for your topic to have the most recent information available?
10 Questions for Evaluating Information
