A Guide to Critically Assessing Information (part 1)

Since Wikipedia’s inception in 2001, English teachers everywhere have drilled the phrase “not a reliable source” into schoolchildren’s heads around the country. But twenty years later, the pool of unreliable information has gone from a puddle to an ocean. Social media, regular media, even our families, fill us with a daily deluge of information. How do we know what we can trust or believe? As a company with the slogan “We Make Data Work”, knowing which data to look at is paramount. For decisions large or small, this handy guide should help you discern which sources to follow, and which you can swipe left on.

Confirmation Bias

The first step to most curiosities is to head to your favorite search engine. Determining what to type in to get the most useful results can be overwhelming. One thing we must all be aware of is, confirmation bias:

“The tendency to gather evidence that confirms preexisting expectations, typically by emphasizing or pursuing supporting evidence while dismissing or failing to seek contradictory evidence.”[1]

An example of this would be arguing whether pit bulls are good with children. Searching “pit bulls biting children” would populate a slew of terrible photos of dog bites. Searching “pit bulls playing with children”, on the other hand, produces adorable photos of dogs cuddling babies. Searching for phrases to prove our own points is dangerous. To get a more accurate depiction, without these biases, one could search “pit bulls and children.”

This is important to remember when researching topics, as our own biases often get in the way of us learning new information. No discovery is complete without examining the topic from all angles.

Sources

After typing in your question to your favorite search engine, millions of hits usually populate the page, leaving you to determine which pages to click. A quick method for choosing is to look at the available pages’ URLs: the ending of a URL gives us insight as to what type of website it belongs to.

• URLs ending in .com or .net typically refer to commercial businesses. These pages may have hidden agendas (e.g. getting you to purchase one of their products).
• URLs ending in .org are typically intended for non-profit businesses. However, there are no safeguards to restrict these guidelines, and therefore should be followed with caution.
• URLs ending in .gov or .mil are reserved for government or military entities, respectively.
• URLs ending in .edu are reserved for educational institutions and are usually academic in nature.

A good rule of thumb is to look at .gov or .edu URLs for the most official source of information. These pages have been vetted and approved by well-respected institutions who stake their reputation on the contents of these pages.

Other Biases

On occasion, there are no .gov or .edu sites available for your topic, or a non-.gov page has exactly what you were wondering. When reading these pages, keep in mind the following to ensure your source is credible:

• Who—who wrote this?
  • Is the person who wrote the article a published professor on this topic, or was it a nine-year-old who conducted a school science project?
• What—what kind of research did they do?
  • Was it a thorough experiment, or simply a few observations someone has made?
• Where—where was it published?
  • Did you find it in a peer-reviewed, academic journal, or did you see it on social media?
• When—when was it published?
  • If the topic is rapidly evolving, a paper published in 2009 may be out of date for your purposes.
• Why—why were they researching it?
  • Their research may have been trying to prove something, and therefore you may unwittingly fall prey to confirmation bias.

Why It Matters

As consultants, we at Softcrylic strive to guide our clients on best practices for both collecting and analyzing data. In an overwhelming world of numbers, we are here to help you decipher the validity and value of insights important to your company. While this should be enough of a guide to help you win most Facebook arguments, check out Part 2 of this series to learn how to scrutinize the reports themselves.