The CRAAP Test for Evaluating Information
A vast amount of information is available to you from a wide variety of sources. Part of your job as a scholar is to choose the information that best and most reliably supports your research hypothesis. Fortunately, there are some standard criteria by which scholars have judged the quality of research and information available to them. One checklist of criteria, developed by librarians at Meriam Library at California State, Chico is cleverly called the CRAAP test. CRAAP stands for Currency, Relevance, Authority, Accuracy and Purpose.
Use the checklist and decide "Is your information solid or is it....?
Globalization and Google (or any Web search engine)
Most of us begin searching the WWW using a simple keyword search and a Web search engine like Google. We then look at page after page of search results-links to hundreds if not thousands of irrelevant or out-of-date pages or links that don't work at all. However, most Web search engines also provide special search tools for more targeted and precise searches. Google, for example, offers Advanced Searching, Google Scholar, and Google Books. Each of these searches has specific strengths and, in general, would be more appropriate for university level research. However, even when you use a special search to find information on your topic, when you use that information, the responsibility for analyzing and verifying the currency, relevance, authority,accuracy, and purpose of the information you find there is totally yours, not an editors or an editorial board. So be wary and cautious and very, very critical. Sometimes easy does not mean good.
- GoogleResults of about 33,100,000 for globalization. (0.44 seconds)
- Google Advanced SearchAllows you to do a search of Google pages with limits such as language, file type, domain, etc. for fewer and more precise searches. Results in English for globalization site:org filetype:pdf.
- Google Books Search
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Provides the ability to search selected full-text of books, with links to full-text, sample selections and pages, holding libraries and book-selling sites. About 548,000 books on globalization. (0.38 seconds) - Google Scholar This link opens in a new window
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Enables you to search specifically for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from all broad areas of research. Use Google Scholar to find articles from a wide variety of academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities, as well as scholarly articles available across the web.
See instructions for setting up Google Scholar to access additional online fulltext available to UK users.
The other way of using Web information is to use websites identified by others, particularly librarians and scholars. Many library research guides are available on the WWW that will have a section on free and interesting Web pages dealing with particular subject areas. For example, the resources listed below were extrapolated from a page on "Globalization" compiled by Specialists in the Business Reference Services Science, Technology & Business Division of the Library of Congress.
- The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy ResearchPrivate, nonpartisan, not-for-profit institution dedicated to research and education on issues of government, politics, economics, and social welfare. American Enterprise Institute (AEI). Free resource.
- Bank for International SettlementsIncludes articles and speeches published by Central Banks of many different countries.
- Brookings InstitutionResearch reports published by Brookings on global development.
- Cato Institute Center for Trade Policy StudiesThe Cato Institute is a non-profit public policy research foundation. The Institute is named for Cato's Letters, a series of libertarian pamphlets that helped lay the philosophical foundation for the American Revolution. Includes books, book reviews, papers, articles. Most are full-text resources written by Cato Institute scholars.
- Economic Policy Institute (EPI)The Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit Washington D.C. think tank, was created in 1986 to broaden the discussion about economic policy to include the interests of low- and middle-income workers. Today, with global competition expanding, wage inequality rising, and the methods and nature of work changing in fundamental ways, it is as crucial as ever that people who work for a living have a voice in the economic discourse.
- National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Working Papers Series
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Abstracts and full-text (in .pdf) of working papers from this nonprofit economic research organization. Concentrates on four types of empirical research: developing new statistical measurements, estimating quantitative models of economic behavior, assessing the effects of public policies on the U.S. economy, and projecting the effects of alternative policy proposals. The working papers make results of NBER research available to other economists in preliminary form to encourage discussion and suggestions for revision before final publication.
