What's the deal with bias?
- We are all told to avoid obviously biased sources in our research, but it's a little more complicated than that.
- If you include a source with bias, make sure that you are upfront about that and account for it in the text of your paper.
- Bias and credibility are often two sides of the same coin. For example, if you are researching payment for student athletes, you could consider an opinion piece written by a student athlete biased, since they have a personal stake in the situation. However, the student athlete perspective is important to include, and an opinion piece can be a great way to illustrate personal perspective. Just be clear that this is one person's opinion that is close to the situation.
ALSO, Investigate:
- Does the organization research other issues?
- Are there similar themes to their research? Policy solutions?
- Very important to find out who is involved with the organization and their backgrounds.
- Who are the major supporters and donors? Are there political leanings? Agendas?
- Figuring all this out will help you understand the context and the information.
What about website domains?
- Many of us have been taught to evaluate sources based on the website domain (.com, .org, .edu, .gov, etc.). Evaluating is more complicated and now that we're at university, we need to go a little deeper.
- Domain names only tell you the type of organization responsible for the source. Domain names should not be used alone to gauge credibility.
- Keep in mind that many scholarly source vendors host their collections on .com websites. Even if your domain name includes a .com, you could be looking at a scholarly source.
- Likewise, the homepage for UMD (umd.edu) has a .edu domain name, but this home page is not a scholarly source. Websites with .edu domain names simply denote that a university, college, or educational institution claims responsibility for the content.
- All sources from the U.S. government will have a .gov domain name, but not all government sources are equal. A government report with data and conclusions may suit your needs better than a general website page.
Many organizations publish research reports on their websites. While these can be a valuable source of information, remember that many organizations have a social and/or political agenda/perspective that frames their research.
