Criteria Used to Evaluate Journal Articles and Websites
Criteria Used to Evaluate Journal Articles and Websites
Criteria Used to Evaluate Journal Articles and Websites
Many websites and articles contain untrustworthy content and it is important to further investigate their credentials. Firstly, the sources should be no older than five years so that the information contained is the most up-to-date. Science and medicine are constantly changing and improving, and it is essential to have information that reflects that. Secondly, the websites should not have the ending .com since that is usually a privately owned domain to which anyone can contribute information. The only credible websites have .org, .edu, or .gov, and the authors who contribute to those sites are credentialed scholars from educational institutions and governmental agencies. Third, the academic or peer-reviewed journals are trustworthy and considered credible. Finally, using the CRAAP test and assessing the currency, relevance, authority, accuracy, and purpose of the source will help to separate the credible from the untrustworthy information (Lowe et al. 2021).
When presented with a preeclamptic patient like in the Vila Health scenario, the new nurse should go through each of the above steps to decipher the validity of her new research. Many of her sources were actually not credible since they were from websites ending in .com and personal blog postings. The usable information was from the Capella library and were peer-reviewed scholarly journal pieces.
