Research Guides: Building your Research Skills: Evaluate

SIFT method: how to assess sources quickly

Assessing and evaluating information quickly is essential in daily life as well as for your academic work.

SIFT is about figuring out whether information is worth your time and attention, before you spend it.

The following tabs will explain the four "moves" of SIFT:

Stop
Investigate the source
Find better coverage
Trace claims, quotes, and media to the original context

You don't need to spend a lot of time on SIFT-ing through information; take just enough time to cover each move, and you'll be confident that you know what you're dealing with.

Watch this video, and then consider: if I hadn't watched the last 15 seconds, how would I apply SIFT to it?

This summary of the Michael Caulfield's SIFT method was adapted from materials developed by SFU, KPU, and ctrl+F.

Find Michael Caulfield's original work here.

Step 1: STOP

Before you read or share something, ask yourself:

Who created this information?
- What is their reputation?
Where did you find it?
- What is the location's reputation?

Step 2: INVESTIGATE the source

Before you spend time reading or watching something, it's good to know where the information came from.

Ask yourself:

Who made this?
Why did they make it?

Step 3: FIND other coverage

Look at what other people are saying about the information you found, and the claims it makes.

Ask yourself:

What claims are being made?
Are these claims controversial or widely accepted?

Look for multiple sources that talk about the same information, so you can understand the context and history of the claims.

Step 4: TRACE the claims

Can you find the original context for the claims, quotes, or media you're looking at? You want to see the original source to get the full picture.

Ask yourself:

Did the original source make the same claims?
Is what I'm looking at taking information out of context to make the claims sound more interesting or important than they really are?

Fact Checker
Fact-checking search engine developed by Canada's Centre for Digital Media Literacy.

"It’s a custom search engine that lets you search several fact-checkers at once, including: Snopes.com, Agence France Presse Canada, FactCheck.org, Politifact, Washington Post Fact Checker, Associated Press Fact Check, HoaxEye and Les Decrypteurs."
Snopes
"The oldest and largest fact-checking site, widely regarded by journalists and readers as an invaluable research companion."
AFP Fact Check
AFP is "multi-lingual, multicultural news agency whose mission is to provide accurate, balanced and impartial coverage of news wherever and whenever it happens in the world on a continuous basis."
This is the Canadian branch.
PolitiFact
Fact-checking journalism site, focussed on American politics. "Our core principles are independence, transparency, fairness, thorough reporting and clear writing."

Making Sense of your Research

Finding resources is a good start, but you have to activate what you have found: evaluate resources effectively and organize them clearly if you want to complete a good research project.

How good are my resources?

You can open to full text by clicking on the three upright dots below the image

Understanding Evidence

Evidence for Democracy, a Canadian group devoted to promoting evidence-based scholarship, has published three guides to understanding and using evidence. Click on images below for PDFs: