Information Literacy for Policy Makers and Influencers
UNIT 4: EVALUATING INFORMATION
 Anyone can put up a web page
 Many pages are not kept up-todate
 There is no quality control of
the web
So… use the Who, What and
When technique to evaluate…
WHO?
You need to establish who is
providing the information and
whether they are likely to be a
reliable and valid source.
Organisation
As a non-specialist, it can be
difficult to know whether information is trustworthy just by reading it.
However, reputable organisations will check information they provide
carefully to ensure it is accurate. Therefore sometimes the best way to
know whether to trust information is to find out the reputation and bias or
the organisation which is providing it.
Author
Reports and policy briefings produced by organisations often do not state
the name of the individual author. However, some websites may give
details of the person who wrote the information. It can be helpful to find
out whether this person is qualified to give information on the topic.
Reviewers
It is important to know whether the information you are reading has been
reviewed and if so by whom? Information which has been reviewed by
experts is more likely to be accurate.
Information Literacy for Policy Makers and Influencers
URL
The address of a Web page can provide
useful clues. URL stands for "Uniform
Resource Locator" and is the address of the
page you are accessing. You'll usually see
one at the top of your browser when you have
a web page open. They look something like
this:
http://www.who.int/whr/en/index.html
URLs may look tricky to unravel, but the best
way to work out "who" and "where" is to break down the URL into its
component parts.
URL segment
What's this?
http://www.who.int
Hostname - this refers to the computer (or server) where the
Web pages or files you want to view are hosted. It usually
contains the name of the organisation responsible for the
site; in this case, "who" (the World Health Organisation).
whr/en/
Path - this is usually a reference to a specific folder on the
server. There can be many of these in a URL, separated by
forward slashes "/".
index.html
File Name / File Type - this is the file you are, or will be
viewing. In this case, .html is the file extension. This can
change depending on the type of file: e.g. .mov is a video file;
.doc is a document; .gif is an image.
You can often find out more about the nature of the organisation that
owns the server from the organisation code used in the URL. For
example:

.ac, .edu academic or educational servers

.co, .com commercial servers

.gov government servers

.org non-governmental, non-profit making organisations
Information Literacy for Policy Makers and Influencers
You can sometimes find out more information from the URL about the
country in which the server is based by looking for the country code
which usually appears at the end of the URL. For example:

.au Australia

.uk United Kingdom
WHAT?
Can you trust the content of the information and is it relevant to your
work? This decision requires some critical thinking. Ask yourself:
 Is it relevant? Does the information help answer your research
questions? The information may be from a very reliable source but if it
doesn’t deal with the questions you are asking it will not help you.
 What location does it concern? Is the information relevant to the
geographical area you are interested in? For example if you are
interested in climate change adaptation in Malawi, a report about
climate change adaptation in France may contain some useful
information but you need to be selective about what you use.
 Is it valid and accurate? Are the arguments rational and logical and
supported by relevant and correct evidence? Can you differentiate
fact from opinion?
 Is it bias? What perspective is the author coming from? Are they
giving both sides of the story? Or are they arguing from a particular
position/ worldview or with a particular motivation which might skew
their writing? Do you need to find counter-arguments that give an
alternative point of view?
WHEN?
Information on the Internet can be out of date, change without warning or
disappear completely. The accuracy of your source may be affected by
the date it was published. In some fields using the latest research is very
important – as the some conclusions may need to be altered in the light
of new findings. Look for a publication date on the title or home page,
last updated dates in the header or footer, dates in the citations, or
explore the About page for clues about currency.