Finding Good, Current Sources
- Make sure you're using a reliable source! Use the CRAAP test.
- No matter what the copyright date of the website is, check the dates on the references and sources listed for the information.
- The website might have been updated recently, but that doesn't mean that the sources are current.
- If there are no sources, then not only do you have no idea how old the information is, you also have no idea where it came from.
- (Current is here defined as dating to 2012 or later - information about health topics is dangerous if it's out of date!)
- Figure out what organizations keep statistics on your topic, and then search their websites. Go straight to the source.
- Use search operators to narrow your search faster! Below are examples of Google search operators. If you prefer another search engine, the operators might be slightly different, so check their support pages and search tools.
- "binge drinking" gets you pages with that exact phrase - not just those two words separately
- 2013..2017 gets you websites that mention any number between 2013 and 2017
- site:nytimes.org gets you results only from a specific website (you can also type just parts of a URL - for example, adding site:.edu to a search gets results only from websites with .edu in the URL, without being more specific)
- -toddlers eliminates pages with a result you aren't looking for (useful if your topic has a few different angles, and you're only looking at one)
- You can get fancy with this by combining search operators - try something like site:pewinternet.org teens digital addiction 2013..2017.
- Go to the Citation Help tab above for guides and more resources. Remember, you need to cite everything you use - pictures are information, too, since they help to communicate with your audience. (And find the actual source of images you find using Google!)
Recommended Resources
- Here are a few sites from the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to get you started:
- CDC: Youth Risk Behavior Survey, 2015
- NIH
- NIH's MedlinePlus Health Topics
- NIH's Mental Health Information
- CDC's National Center for Health Statistics
- CDC's FastStats
- CDC's Data & Statistics by Topic
- A good place to look for statistics from survey data is the Pew Research Center - Notice that their search function lets you filter by a date range, so you can narrow it down to recent information!