Topic 2 Information quality
Suppose you have been carrying out a thorough and systematic search for information on your topic of interest. You have found quite a lot of material – more than you can include in your work. How will you decide what to include and what to discard? Even if you don't have more than you need, is all that you have ‘good enough’?
Activity Thinking about good and bad information
Think about what might be ‘good’ or ‘bad’ information. Below are some words which have been used to describe information. Try and see if you can divide them into two groups, one for ‘good’ information and one for ‘bad’ information.
| readable | subjective | up to date | confused | badly written |
| current | honest | unreliable | inappropriate | dishonest |
| balanced | unreadable | relevant | out of date | old |
| clear | incomplete | objective | accurate | comprehensive |
| reliable | dated | appropriate | well written | irrelevant |
| biased | inaccurate | cursory | complicated | entertaining |
Are there any words that are difficult to classify this way? Why do you think this is? Are there any other words you can add to either group?
Go to the next page to see our suggestions.