To evaluate a source is to decide whether you should believe it — and the fastest way is to ask five questions, one for each letter of CRAAP: Currency, Relevance, Authority, Accuracy, Purpose.

The internet has a way of sounding sure of itself. A page can be beautifully designed, written with total confidence, and still be flat-out wrong. So the single most useful question you can carry into any piece of reading is a quiet one: “should I actually believe this?” You don’t need to be an expert in the subject to answer it well — you need a habit, and CRAAP is that habit.

Five questions, one for each letter

• Currency — how recent is it, and does recency even matter here?
• Relevance — does it really address what you need, at the right depth?
• Authority — who made it, and what do they actually know?
• Accuracy — is it backed by evidence you could check?
• Purpose — is it there to inform you, persuade you, or sell you something?

Authority depends on the question

One idea to keep with you: a chef is a brilliant source on browning onions and a poor one on heart surgery. Don’t just ask “is this good?” — ask “good for what?” The same page can be authoritative for one question and useless for another.

🔗 A friendly free guide: Excelsior OWL — Evaluating Sources

Sometimes the real question isn’t whether a source is trustworthy, but what kind of source it is in the first place. That’s next. On to Scholarly vs Popular Sources.

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