Questioning CRAAP: A Comparison of Source Evaluation Methods with First-Year Undergraduate Students

Abstract

Librarians and instructors see college students struggle with evaluating information and wonder how to best teach source evaluation in a one-time course integrated library research session to ensure understanding and improve student performance. This research compared multiple sections of first-year students over two semesters taught two evaluation methods: the CRAAP method, and the six journalistic question words. Results indicate that students taught to evaluate information using the six question words produced better end-of-semester papers. Results of the pre-, post-, and end-of-semester quizzes were less conclusive, but do highlight some of the challenges first-year students face when determining credibility. Results have the potential to inform instructional practice.