A week of ENG 102.

Read less of the page, learn more about it

ENG 102 · Evaluating sources and research questions · about 580 words

When a website looks professional, has a tidy logo, and cites a few studies, most people decide it is probably trustworthy. That is a reasonable habit offline, where printing a glossy magazine costs real money. Online, anyone can build a polished site in an afternoon. A research course asks you to judge sources in a way that does not depend on how they look.

In a study published in 2019, two Stanford education researchers, Wineburg and McGrew, watched three groups evaluate real websites: professional fact-checkers, university historians, and Stanford undergraduates. The historians and students were smart, careful readers. Many of them still misjudged the sites, because they stayed on the page and read it closely from top to bottom, studying the About page and the citations. The researchers call this vertical reading.

The fact-checkers did something different. Within seconds, they opened new browser tabs and searched for the organization behind the site. They wanted to know what other people said about the source before spending time on what the source said about itself. Wineburg and McGrew call this lateral reading, because it moves sideways across the web. The fact-checkers reached better judgments faster, while reading less of the original page.

Lateral reading works because a source's description of itself is the least independent evidence available. A group funded by an industry can choose a neutral-sounding name. A one-person blog can call itself an institute. The useful questions are who is behind this, who pays for it, and what reliable outside sources say about it. A news story, a Wikipedia entry with its references, or a report from a respected organization can often answer those questions in a minute.

A second habit is tracing claims to where they started. The digital literacy educator Mike Caulfield suggests going upstream: if an article says a study found something, find the study. Claims often change as they are repeated. A careful finding about a small group of people can turn into a sweeping headline after a few retellings.

Judging sources is only half of research. The other half is knowing what you are looking for. Many students start with a topic, such as social media or school start times. A topic is a subject area. It does not tell you what to search for or when you are done.

A research question narrows the topic into something you can actually answer with evidence. "Social media" is a topic. "Does banning phones at lunch change how much students talk to each other?" is a research question. It names a specific group, a specific change, and a specific outcome, so you can tell which sources matter and which do not.

In their guide The Craft of Research, Wayne Booth, Gregory Colomb and Joseph Williams describe a useful three-step move:

Name the topic. I am studying school start times.

Add a question. I want to find out whether later start times affect attendance.

Explain why it matters. This will help readers judge whether a schedule change is worth its cost. This last step answers the question every reader quietly asks: so what?

The two skills support each other. A clear question tells you which sources you need, and checking sources laterally keeps weak ones out of your paper. Neither takes much extra time once it becomes a habit. The students who struggle in research courses are often not the ones who find too few sources. They are the ones who never decided what they were asking, and then trusted whatever came up first.

Sources: W. C. Booth, G. G. Colomb and J. M. Williams, The Craft of Research (1995); M. Caulfield, Web Literacy for Student Fact-Checkers (2017); S. Wineburg and S. McGrew, "Lateral Reading," Teachers College Record (2019).