Website Exercise

Approximately 4 pages

The purpose of this exercise is to help you learn to search for information on psychology of women and, more importantly, to learn to distinguish authoritative sources that offer credible research-based information from popular sources that offer biased information or are trying to sell a product.

Step 1

Choose an interesting, important research question in the psychology of women and men – for example, what causes men to be aggressive with other men? (Do not use that question. Make up one of your own.)

Step 2

Access these resources on evaluating websites, including one on our library’s youtube channel. They all provide excellent information guides to evaluating websites. I strongly urge you to watch at least two of the videos.

https://olinuris.library.cornell.edu/ref/research/webeval.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-17MbjEws4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_qR5lpnXBE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tN8S4CbzGXU

You should definitely review one of the guides and watch two of the videos before you begin your research project, and your paper should reflect the knowledge you gained from the guides and videos.

Step 3

Use a popular web search engine, probably Google, to find two websites. One of the sources needs to be an authoritative, credible source and the other needs to be a popular and non-credible source. In addition to using a search engine, you can go to a source that you know in advance should be credible, such as a government agency (e.g., the U. S. Department of Labor or the National Institute of Mental Health) or a professional organization (e.g., the American Psychological Association). Print out one page from your credible source (e.g., first page or screenshot of website or page of pdf on website) and one page from your non-credible source (e.g., first page or screenshot of website) to attach to your paper. Do NOT use a scientific article for this exercise; scientific articles are not websites.

Step 4

Write a brief 4-page, double-spaced (1-inch margins; 12-point Times New Rome or 11-pt Calibri font) paper in which you:

• state clearly the question you set out to answer
• describe the specific process by which you identified each of the websites
• summarize the answer to the question that you found on each
• evaluate the credibility of the information on each website

Be sure that your work reflects information that you learned in the evaluative websites guides and tutorial. Also, do not use unnecessary extra-spacing to artificially increase the length of your paper.