Website Evaluation Webquest

So how did you do in your website exploration? Since this is intended as a self evaluation exercise, the information you find here will be the answer key to the questions posed in the Webquest. Did your assessment match what is identified below? Do you have any further details to add to the assessment? In going back into the earlier websites, can you see additional flaws and strengthes in the websites chosen for analysis in this webquest?

Website Classification

News Article: Shift Work

Peer Reviewed Journal: Experience of Cancer

Home Page: Womensheathmatters.ca

Web Article:  Minimizing Medication Errors  Nursing care of lesbian and gay male patients or clients  The second article is also a PDF of a report which can also be considered a web article.

Credibility

Website 1:  Author is the organization (Media Smarts).  It includes an "About Us" link which provides staff biographies and information about a board of directors.

Website 2: Author identified as Valerie DeBenedette and she is identified as a senior medical editor.  If you click on the hyperlink at her name it tells you that she is a science writer. So here is an example of an organization related to pharmecueticals eliciting the skills of a non health care provider to write about health related topics.

Website 3: There is no author identified for this blog but the author uses a posting name of mommytummytuck.  If you click on the "About" link on the side panel her only identifying credentials are that she is "a mom" and she has had a tummy tuck.  The photo links do not show a picture of her face.

Accuracy

Website 1: On the second page of the web article (found by clicking on the arrow at the bottom of the first page) we find that the review date of this article was January 2011. It is clearly intended for younger children who are likely at least of upper elementary school age (grade 5 or 6) and its completeness/comprehensiveness reflects that age group.

Website 2: Has a publication date of January 1, 2013. This website is intended for parents who are intending to divorce. It is a government site and reads complete and refers to Canadian law on the subject.

Website 3:  Has a publication date of August 30, 2009. Its target audience is parents of teenagers. The information is probably complete but it refers to a book the author has written which suggests an ulterior motive for this article.

Reasonableness

Website 1: The emphasis of this article is on pro co-sleeping and it makes efforts to refute the claims of those who object to co-sleeping but provides no references or citations for its information.  It also makes grand sweeping claims like:  "Throughout human history...." and "Such views are not supported by human experience worldwide."

Website 2: The emphasis of this article is the view that co-sleeping is wrong.  It uses an inflammatory word, "murder", in its title and reports on an extreme story of an infant death while co-sleeping.  The quotes in the article are from parents who are outraged and also against co-sleeping. 

Website 3: The intention of this entire website is to sell protein supplement products. As soon as a glowing review is presented along side something for sale, it is automatically suspect. Every hyperlink takes you to a place where you can purchase the product being discussed.

Support

Website 1: Sources for this website are identified and the information appears detailed, however it is a Wiki site which means that anyone can go in and edit it and the information is not static. The fact that the information is constantly changing makes it not a great choice for scholarly use. I was unable to identify a date of update for the site and it acknowledges over 30 authors, many of them only by a pseudonym.

Website 2: Also a comprehensive study skills website which contains similar topics to the first website but supplies them by hyperlink to other web articles.  Each of those hyperlinked sites would have to independently assessed for their value in an academic setting.