Reading and Researching Skills
The PROMPT Checklist for Source Reliability
1. Presentation
You can tell a lot about sites by their appearance. Many of the sites I found when I
searched for ‘happiness’ in Google displayed pictures of smiling faces and used big
headlines. They offered such prospects as:
“LIVE IN A WORLD WITH NO PROBLEMS Using the Impossibility Transformer […]
Confidently dissolve “problems” with: Money, Relationships, Time pressures, Goals,
Weight and more!”
(Copsey, 2004)
The style was clearly intended to attract attention and arouse hope and enthusiasm. This
contrasted with sites such as that of the World Database of Happiness, which specialise in
academic writing and research. These attract custom. They aim to give an impression of
soundness and dependability.
2. Relevance
Although the sites found by Google all related in some way to the topic of ‘happiness’,
most were not relevant to my interests. They were mainly about achieving personal
happiness in life rather than happiness as a goal of social policy, and so it was easy to see
their lack of relevance. It would be more challenging to judge the relevance of different
articles for the Journal of Happiness Studies. I would have to look at their titles and skim
through the abstract at the start of each one.
Finding a lot of high quality information brings its own problems. You have to think about
what exactly you are looking for, so that you can weigh up the relevance of what you find.
3. Objectivity
Academic research and writing aim to be objective. It is impersonal, using logical
argument rather than appealing to emotions. If I had explored the websites which offered
pathways to personal happiness, I might have encountered some interesting and valuable
ideas. However, it seemed unlikely that they would be academically compelling, because
they were presented from extremely committed standpoints. The writers showed little
interest in achieving a balanced and fair presentation. There was no effort to take a
detached stance and leave me to draw my own reasoned conclusions.
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4. Method
Academic writers provide a list of references to show how what they say connects with
what others in their field have said. They also back their argument up with evidence and
make clear how this evidence was gathered. When you see reference and discussion of
evidence, you know you have found the right kind of website. You can then examine the
evidence in detail: for example, if you want to check how large the research samples were,
or the quality of questionnaires used.
By contrast, many of the commercial ‘happiness’ websites made bold claims without
offering evidence or indicating who is being quoted. One I found (Sedona Training
Associates, 2004) opened with the quotation: ‘the fastest, easiest, and most powerful selfimprovement technique available today’, but gave no obvious indication of who said this.
Was it just a claim by the sponsor of the site? There was a section of the site devoted to
testimonials, but you would have to do some searching to find out whether they quotation
is attributed to anyone.
Another announced, ‘Think The Same Thoughts As The Most Effective, Successful &
Happy People, And You’ll Get Exactly The Same Results In Your Life’ (Think Right Now!
International, 2004). This is a very difficult claim to verify. What are ‘same thoughts’, or
‘same results’? Interestingly, neither of these websites made mention of the ‘Impossibility
Transformer’. For which so much was claimed in the Live In A World With No Problems
website (see ‘1 presentation’ above). How can all these competing claims be reconciled?
Within this genre of website there is little effort to connect with what other websites say.
Indeed, each stresses its uniqueness.
5. Provenance
Provenance is to do with origin and authenticity; it is a bit like ‘respectability’. Who knows
you? What is your reputation and status in the world? Many people tend to trust websites
presented by government departments, the BBC, or large commercial organisations. Is
this justified? It always pays to be cautious, but on the other hand, you have to take your
information from somewhere. At least large, well-established institutions have reputations
to preserve and could be damaged by being exposed as unreliable. One first sight, I did
wonder how respectable the World Database of Happiness was, but when I saw the name
of a famous university on it I was reassured. Then, as I explored the site, I came across
more links to well-established universities.
By contrast, most of the commercial websites offering happiness confidently presented
people and organisations I had never heard of as ‘world leading’, and made no reference
to institutions that I had heard of. It might seem unfair to hold doubts about sources just
because you haven’t heard of them, but trust has to be based on something.
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6. Timeliness
Finally, if you use information on the internet it is important to know when it was produced.
An academic publication will always give the date it was published, and ‘serious’ websites
tend to display the date when they were last updated (some websites can sit untended for
years). At the foot of the contents page of the World Database of Happiness, which I
accessed in January 2004, it said it had been updated on October 4, 2003. In any case,
the links to the journal websites brought me right up to date.
Taken from: Andrew Northedge, The Good Study Guide, The Open University, 2005.
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