Policy Brief: Accuracy and Validity

With the preponderance of information available on the web today, the question of accuracy and validity of that information is increasingly becoming an issue. Not only is it an issue that individuals have to deal with, as in instances of lawsuits over individual web postings, controlling the information that’s out there about you as an individual, etc, but increasingly this is also an issue that corporations and the government has to deal with when doing research using the web. “The most important thing to remember about information found on a web site is that anyone with a little money, time, and technical know-how can put a site on the Web. The reliability of that information can be open to question. ALWAYS evaluate anything you find on the Web very carefully” (source: Evaluating Web Sites Information Skills Module; 2001).

Back in grade-school, anytime a student wrote a report they were required to cite where they got their facts, but the validity of the facts themselves were never questioned because the vast majority of print materials were thoroughly validated before they were ever printed. That was the burden of the publisher, and the user of those facts had simply the duty of attribution. Now, this burden is reversed: with millions of individuals “publishing” content on the internet every minute of every day, it becomes the duty of the user of the facts to check the accuracy and validity of those facts.

So, since the clear burden of responsibility for fact-checking falls on the user of internet information, how will you know if what you find comes from someone who really knows what they're talking about? Thankfully, this is not as hard as it may seem. “In general, you should determine the author, his/her expertise, and the reputation of the individual and the company/association/university/ organization” (source: Evaluating Web Sites Information Skills Module; 2001). As additional guidelines, the following questions from the textbook "Planning Effective Instruction" by Walter Dick and Robert Reiser, are useful to ask yourself when considering the accuracy and validity of internet content:

• Is the content accurate? (Is the information factually stated?)
• Is the content up-to-date? (Is the copyright date within the last five years?)
• Is the content comprehensive?
• Is the content congruent with district/state curriculum guidelines
• Are social values treated fairly? (Are ethnic groups, males, and females shown in non-stereotyped roles through words and pictures?)

Now that we’ve established that there are some pretty standard questions for checking internet content, how should organizations deal with operationalizing this duty? Many organizations have developed standard posting guidelines (source: Evaluating Information on the Internet; 2009), which could be tailored to each professional context. Additionally, there are some pretty standard ways to check the date and the “updates” to the content, such as using Bookmarklets. Within my organization, there are several options to consider when writing a policy for how to ensure the accuracy and validity of information. The first option that could be considered would be to have a Knowledge Manager who is well trained in information accuracy and validity checking, review all content before it “goes out the door” for public and/or client consumption. The positive aspects of this strategy would be that the company would achieve consistency and reliability in ensuring that all documents are fact-checked and “blessed” before they go out and represent the company at large. The negative aspects of this strategy is that it severely limits the creativity and the capacity of individual producers (ID’s, project managers, etc) within the organization to design and push forth their own content. It could create an information bottle-neck within the organization, which would be detrimental both to project timelines and to budgets.

The second option that could be considered within my organization would be to train each employee about how to ensure accuracy and validity of internet information when using it in research, training, or presentations. This could be accomplished most cost-effectively by designing a training course on how to determine the accuracy and validity of information, such as the Evaluating Web Sites Information Skills Module from Virginia Tech University. The positive aspects of this strategy would be that it would eliminate the information bottleneck of the first option, and would allow individual producers in the organization to evaluate and proceed with their own work. However, on the negative side, this eliminates the consistency and reliability of having one skilled practitioner evaluate everyone’s work, and the company risks something going out under their name that might not be from a completely accurate or valid source.