How to Conduct Research on the Internet

Defining your task	What question or perspective on your topic must you uncover? After you have decided what you need to find, create a list of questions or subtopics to research.
Strategies	Where will you search for information? Consider all possible sources, including newspapers, magazines, books, the Internet, and people who can provide information and insights.
Locating and accessing information	Where do you find reliable information? How do you locate it? If you are using the Internet as your primary resource base, you MUST evaluate the website before using the information it provides. (Below are several tips for effective use of the Internet.).
Using Information	How do you choose which information to use? Be sure to use only evidence that supports your position or the point or perspective you want to convey.
Synthesizing	How do your organize your information? Use graphic organizers and outlines.
Evaluating the end product	How well does your final product meet your goal? Evaluate your work and/or have it evaluated by others.

Millions of websites ranging from corporate sites to those created by young children are available. Anyone can publish almost anything on the Internet, so it is difficult to tell if the content creator has any real expertise in the subject area. When you are looking for information, evaluate the authenticity, quality, and usefulness of any website before you use it for research.

Ask yourself the following questions:

Credibility

• Is there an author? Is the page signed?
  
• Is the author qualified? An expert? How do you know? How can you find out? If not, how legitimate is the information?
  
• "Contact Us": Can you contact the author for more information or for permission to use material? If not, how legitimate is the information?
  
• "About Us": Can you find more information about the sponsor of the site? If not, how legitimate is the information?
  
• Is the sponsor a legitmate or reputable organization? How can you tell? If not, how legitimate is the information?
  
• If the page does not include a signature or indicates a sponsor, is there any other way to determine its origin? If not, how legitimate is the information?
  

More information about the site

• Look for a header or footer. Information about the author and the site sponsor may be provided.
  
  
• Look at the URL and the domain.
  
• ".com" indicates a commercial site
• ".edu" is an educational institution
• ".gov" is a government site
• ".org" is an organization, usually non-profit
• ".net" indicates adminstratives sites in North America

Sometimes you will see an indication of the country of origin, such as ".uk" for the United Kingdom, "au" for Australia, ".ca" for Canada, etc.

• Search for more information Use your search engine to find out more about the author, the article and the sponsoring organization. You may be able to verify the reputation of the author or organization through additional searching.
  
  
• Contact the page sponsor to find out more. E-mail the author or page sponsor if you want more information.
  

Accuracy and Currency

• Up-to-date or timely: Is a date given on the publication or a date for revisions to the site?
  
• Factual: Are the sources documented from reputable sources? How can you verify the accuracy of the information?
  
• Supporting evidence: Are statistics or other evidence of research provided? Are the sources of information referenced according to proper documentation standards?
  
• Comprehensive: Are all important facts included, or is some important information left out?
  
• Quality control: Are there spelling and typographical errors?
  
• Links: Are the links current? If they have been moved, likely the site is old and has not been revised lately.
  

More information about the site:

Objectivity

• Does the information show a minimum of bias?
  
• Is the page designed to sway opinion?
  
• Is there any advertising on the page?
  

Download the attached checklist to evaluate a website.

Using a search engine: A search engine is a computer program designed to help find information on the Internet. It by web crawling, indexing, and searching existing web pages and then storing the information it locates for retrieval by users.

The world's most popular search engine is Google, which has several versions in several languages. Google allows the user to search a data base of webpages for information, images, and current news items.

Keywords: Users come to the search engine and make queries by entering keywords. The engine looks up the index and provides a listing of best-matching web pages according to its criteria, usually with a short summary containing the document's title and sometimes parts of the text. To refine your search, put quotation marks around the terms you want searched. For example, if you were looking for information about residential schools in Alberta, enter "residential schools Alberta" complete with the quotation marks. Otherwise, the search engine will look for those terms separately and provide you with some unrelated web pages. Most search engines support the use of the terms AND, OR, and NOT to further refine the search.

Taking notes: After you have located accurate and relevant information, you must take notes. Be sure not to just cut and paste the text! If you do that, you are using someone else's work as your own. That is plagiarism and is not permitted! Organize your note pages according to subtopics.

Click on How to cite sources for more help.