Credibility and Validity of Secondary Sources

A credible source means that the information is high quality and trustworthy, essentially we can believe what the source is telling us. Using high quality work to back up your work will demonstrate your own credibility and will prove to be more effective in proving your argument.

Factors to a sources credibility would be. An authors level of expertise, which will be show through the different types of degrees the author has acquired or extensive experience in the the field of the topic they are writing about. If the authors credentials are not listen then that could be a sign that the authenticity of the study may be in the form of the publication,as some may studies may not be written by scholars, with the publication the articles content is critically examined. 
Another point of a studies credibility is the authors point of view as there could be potential bias. Bias is an inaccurate or unfair presentation of information. Bias can sometimes be intentional. A group with its own agenda may sponsor research and make the researchers sway the results. Bias can sometimes be unintentional, a writers perspective may prevent them from seeing the other side of the issue. In the academic publishing world books and articles go through an editorial phase. They are accessed by editors or groups of scholars evaluate the works quality. Peer reviewed articles are considered high quality. They filter out content made by unqualified or bias authors. Date of publication or validity as in is it valid? Something that was once high quality could be now useless. evaluate the sources appropriateness for your argument.

The criteria also known as the CRAAP test can be used to also evaluate the credibility of work. C stands for currency when was the information published and is it still in date? R stands for relevance how much information is presented, superficial treatment or detail analyses, is the readership level appropriate? A stands for Authority who are the authors and or editors of the information and what are their credentials? are the articles peer reviewed by other experts such as scholars or are they independent or self published? A stands for accuracy, does the source match your understanding of the topic, can you verify the claims in other sourced, how many relevant sources are mentioned. P stands for Purpose, is the purpose state? what is the authors bias and how could it affect the outcome of the study? there can be more than one type of bias in a study.

Google and Wikipedia are not useful because they are online site where anyone can post to meaning that what is put up is self published and not examined by and professional researchers editors or scholars. This means that the information has no credibility to it, so it will most likely contain a lot of bias and perhaps some invalid and out of date information. Google scholar is useful because it acts as a filter and the search engine only finds work which has been peer assessed by professional editors, groups of scholars or published by credible universities.