In this case, you will want to prepare for ongoing essay writing assignments with the same formatting requirements. However, students oftentimes need essay writing help to identify credible sources of information from unreliable ones. Critical analysis of a piece of information is the first step you will take to write a quality essay. Let’s learn how you can analyze your sources of information critically in this blog post.

Why Should You Analyze the Credibility of Your Sources?

Many students would wonder why they should bother about the authenticity and credibility of their sources of information. After all, considering these factors will add more work to their schedule. They will have to go through more pages to find quality sources that is also relevant to their essay. Moreover, they might have to forgo some work from inclusion if the source doesn’t match the authenticity standard they are required to meet.

This concern makes sense, but note that the benefits of searching for credible information far outweigh the costs related to it. First of all, if you collect information from poor sources, you can compromise on the accuracy of your essay. You may lose marks for giving false information.

Secondly, the exercise of critical analysis empowers you to build your analytical reasoning skills. As you advance in your academic career, your lecturers will insist more and more on providing highly credible information from respectable sources. In those days, this analytical skill will help you immensely if you choose not to hire professional essay writing help.

In the end, you will learn to detect right from wrong. This skill of discernment is a crucial life skill that will help you in your academic career and beyond.

How to Assess the Credibility of Your Information Sources?

Not every information presented on the internet or in books is reliable and trustworthy. You need skills to differentiate between truths and lies to reach the right information to support your decisions and scientific and political stances. Here are a few things you should consider to appraise the quality of information you witness.

Nature of Source

Some sources of information are by default more credible than others. Primary sources of information are almost always more credible. For example, if you study the legislations and by-laws directly from government publications, these will be more authentic than the interpretations of these laws.

However, you can see that reading these documents requires background technical knowledge in law that everyone may not possess. So, although primary sources of information are always more credible, they are not always accessible and understandable to everyone. If you don’t have access to primary sources of information, use secondary sources including scientific and trade journals, magazines, and books.

Most scholars would agree that research publication journals are the most credible publications. Out of these, peer-reviewed publications are more trusted than others. The credibility of these journals can be assessed by relevant indexes.

Among magazines, you need to be cautious. Not all magazines are credible. You need to check the editor and sub-editors and their biases around the topic to tell if their publication is credible enough for you. The same holds for online magazines and blogs.

In the end, you may consider books as credible sources of information to gain some essay writing help. While books most often present authentic knowledge, you shouldn’t any information just because it was published in a book. On the contrary, look for the author as well as the citations in the book.

Author’s Credibility

For starters, you can mostly trust the information provided in most trade magazines and scientific journals. If you prefer other sources of information, check the author who has compiled this information. Are they authority in the field of work? What are their previous accomplishments? You will want to take from those authors who have provided authentic and high-quality work in the past.

Don’t forget to check the authority of the editors and sub-editors of that publication. You may oversee this rule if you are taking information from books. For magazines and journals, ensure that the publication only delivers authentic and accurate information.

Methodology and Quality of Work

Another way to verify the credibility of information sources is by studying the whole work for its accuracy and journalistic integrity. Check if the work is accurate enough. You might also want to see inaccuracies in citations or concepts. Sometimes, the publication may tell about its inauthenticity by misrepresenting a major assumption or foundational concept.

If you are studying a scientific study, check its methodology. Is this methodology relevant to prove the research question it presents? Is it enough and well-rounded to prove all the major and minor hypotheses put forth by the research?

A careful study of these concerns will tell you a lot about the validity of a piece of information. However, note that unearthing issues using the quality of a work will require lots of effort. You may not want to use this step for every source of information. Instead, only use this validation step for information that has gone through the verification checks of the nature of the source and the author’s credibility.

Other Factors

The abovementioned methods are enough to understand and comment on the credibility of a source of information. However, you cannot include every piece of credible information in your essays. You must limit the scope of your work to what is demanded by your lecturer. So, make sure that the information sources you browse are relevant to your essay to begin with.

Another factor that you must consider while searching for the right supporting facts is time relevance. This concern is most crucial when you work with highly advanced and rapidly changing sciences such as robotics, bioengineering, and the like.

Wrapping Up

The quality of your essays depends heavily on the information you present in them. So, you will want to present highly authentic and relevant information to support your argument. This blog post details a few steps you must take to ensure that the information you present in your essay is accurate. So, help your essay writing process by verifying the information you will include in it.