Questioning CRAAP

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.

Tools, Tests, and Checklists: The Evolution and Future of Source Evaluation Frameworks

“…CRAAP is not without its critics, however, and there are several pieces of literature assessing the usefulness of the framework (Meola, 2004;Ostenson, 2014;Breakstone, et al, 2018;Fielding, 2019;Blizzard, 2021;Faix, 2021;Liu, 2021;Lowe et. al, 2021).…”