Health Education & Public Health

Here are a few tips to increase your effectiveness using Google:

• To limit to a particular domain,
  enter site: before the domain,
  e.g. site:.edu or site:.gov.
  Domains are related to
  the TYPE of site it is:
  
  .edu = education or university
  .gov  = government
  .org  = nonprofit
  .com, .net = commercial
  
  
• If you're searching using a very specific phrase, place it in quotes. This will search for those words in that exact order.
  
  Examples:
  
  "physical therapy" 
  "power of attorney"
  
  
• Try adding the phrase allintitle: before your search terms.
• Example: allintitle:social media impact families
  
  
• Use Google's Advanced Search and learn more on their Help page.

The URL (uniform resource locator) is the address of a webpage, and you can learn much about the source by its address.URL's include a (top level) domain name that relates to the kind of site it is. 

For example, in the URL http://www.gavilan.edu, the domain is edu. This identifies it as  a college-level educational institution.

Common domains:

.com = commercial, or business related. .com sites typically have something to sell you.

.edu = college-level educational institution

.org = non-profit organization

.gov = government (state domains include the abbreviation for the state + .gov, example, ca.gov

A few things to remember:

While a .edu site identifies it as an educational institution, that does not mean the page you're looking at was created by a professor. It could be created by a student. Make sure you sort this out.

Lots of non-profit organizations are highly authoritative and reliable. Many hospitals, museums, and independent research organizations are non-profits. So is the Ku Klux Klan. Anyone can create a non-profit organization, so use other criteria to help you decide whether this source is reliable.

Every time you look at a web page, there are some key questions you should be asking questions to decide whether or not it's reliable and credible.  These can be grouped into major areas:  authority, accuracy, objectivity, currency and coverage. 

Check out this Cornell University library website about evaluating web pages.

1. Accuracy of Web Documents

• Who wrote the page and can you contact him or her?
• What is the purpose of the document and why was it produced?
• Is this person qualified to write this document?

 2. Authority of Web Documents

• Who published the document and is it separate from the "Webmaster?"
• Check the domain of the document, what institution publishes this document?
• Does the publisher list his or her qualifications?

3. Objectivity of Web Documents

• What goals/objectives does this page meet?
• How detailed is the information?
• What opinions (if any) are expressed by the author?

4. Currency of Web Documents

• When was it produced?
• When was it updated?
• How up-to-date are the links (if any)?

5. Coverage of the Web Documents

• Are the links (if any) evaluated and do they complement the documents' themes?
• Is it all images or a balance of text and images?
• Is the information presented cited correctly?

From the Cal State Fullerton Library

Take this tutorial from the University of Arizona:

Wikipedia: Beneath the Surface describes how articles get into Wikipedia, assesses its reliability, and unpacks advanced features of the site that could be useful in research. 

https://new.library.arizona.edu/tutorials/evaluating-online-info/#/