Evaluating sources and perspectives

A source is useful in relation to a question. A club's announcement can be strong evidence of what the club publicly says while offering little evidence about what everyone in a town believes. Evaluating a source means working out what it can support, how it supports it and where its limits lie.

Avoid giving every website a single “trusted” or “untrusted” score. Examine the particular claim and the information used to support it.

Identify the source before judging the claim

Record who created the material, what kind of material it is and where it came from. An original document, a textbook explanation, an advertisement and a personal recollection have different purposes.

For a web page, look beyond the search-result excerpt. Open the page, check the title and publisher, and distinguish the body text from advertisements, comments or other material around it. If an image quotes another text, try to locate that text in its original context.

Authorship is useful information, not an automatic verdict. A familiar organisation can make a claim outside its expertise. An unfamiliar person may provide checkable evidence. Ask what the author knows, how they know it and what the source actually shows.

Ask about purpose, audience and date

Try to complete the sentence: “This was produced by… for… in order to…”. If a part is unknown, record the gap rather than inventing an answer.

Purpose can affect selection and emphasis. A campaign poster is likely to foreground reasons to support the campaign. That does not make every sentence false; it gives the reader a reason to check the evidence and missing context.

Dates also need interpretation. The date a page was updated, the date an event happened and the date a study collected information may be different. An old source can be exactly right for a historical question. A current policy question usually needs the currently applicable policy.

Primary and secondary sources

A primary source gives direct evidence relevant to a particular enquiry: an organisation's own declaration, for example, when the question is what it declares. A secondary account describes, interprets or analyses other material. Neither label guarantees accuracy for every purpose.

Humanists International's 2022 declaration is a primary source for the organisation's public account of humanism. It cannot establish the beliefs of every non-religious person. To answer a population question, a reader would need suitable evidence about the population.

The Ofsted RE research review of 2021 discusses the importance of knowing how an account of religion or non-religion was constructed. It is a research review with a publication date, not evidence that any activity on this site has been evaluated by inspectors.

Two fictional source cards

Both cards are invented for this exercise. The organisations, records and numbers below do not refer to a real school. The enquiry is: “Should the school library open later every afternoon?”

Source A: a reading-club campaign poster

Keep our library open longer! At our reading-club meeting, 18 of the 20 members present said they would like later opening. Our whole school needs more reading time.

Context supplied for the exercise: the poster was created by club members after one meeting. Its purpose is to persuade the school to extend opening hours. It does not explain the question put to members or ask pupils outside the club.

Source B: a library desk record

Visits during the final half-hour before closing: Monday 18, Tuesday 11, Wednesday 16. A visit was counted each time a person entered; repeat visits by the same person were included.

Context supplied for the exercise: the librarian kept this record during one week. It covers three afternoons and counts visits rather than unique people. It does not ask visitors whether they would stay later or record the cost of changing opening hours.

Compare what the cards support

Source B is more precise about its counting method, but that does not make it an answer to every question. Source A may be more relevant if the question is what participating club members requested. The right source depends on the claim being assessed.

An appropriately limited conclusion is: “These sources give reasons to investigate later opening, but they do not settle the whole-school preference or practical feasibility.” That conclusion preserves useful information from both cards.

Check corroboration and missing evidence

Corroboration means examining other evidence that bears on the claim. Check whether another page is independently reporting information or simply repeating the first page. Ten copies of one unsupported assertion are not ten independent observations.

For the fictional library decision, useful further work could include a question with clear wording to a broader selection of pupils, observations over a longer period, and information about staffing. Each would address a different gap. None should be presented as already completed.

Also consider what would count against a preferred conclusion. If we only seek information that agrees with us, we can overlook an important objection or a better explanation.

A practical source checklist

1. Question: write the precise claim you are checking.
2. Identity: identify the creator, publisher and source type.
3. Context: check audience, purpose and relevant dates.
4. Support: separate what is asserted from the evidence or reasons offered.
5. Method: examine how observations, quotations or figures were selected.
6. Comparison: look for relevant independent evidence and reasonable alternatives.
7. Limit: write what the source does not establish and adjust the conclusion accordingly.

Use the worldviews reading log to keep these observations together. For help identifying the parts of an argument, read claims, evidence and reasons.

Teacher notes and response guidance

Ask pupils to choose the more useful card for two different questions: “What did the reading club request?” and “How were visits counted?” A strong answer changes its source choice when the question changes and explains why.

For a shorter task, provide the context and ask for one supported conclusion and one unsupported extension. For further challenge, ask pupils to propose an additional source and explain exactly which gap it would address.

Evaluate attribution, relevance and appropriate limits. Do not reward suspicion of all sources equally, or treat a source's religious or non-religious identity as a reliability score. Our editorial policy explains how this publication separates source claims from its own examples and interpretations.