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SOCL 271: Families & Societies (Crawford Sullivan): Websites

A FEW SUGGESTED WEBSITES

Council on Contemporary Families

American FactFinder, from the Census Bureau

Administration for Children and Families

Try using Google Advanced Search to limit to .gov sites or you can just type site:gov at the end of any Google search.

Congressional Research Service presents reports on major policy issues, such as domestic social policy. CRS doesn't make routinely publish its reports online, but there are number of sites that compile reports. For example: Archive-It search tool.

When you are reading articles & books, look for any mention of organizations that may have produced research reports you could use. For example, The Marriage-Go-Round discusses the Fertility and Family Survey which was produced by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe 

EVALUATING WEBSITES

Google is a great tool--just make sure that you evaluate the websites in your search results.
Questions to help you evaluate the websites that you decide to use for your research.

Author
Who is the author?
How is the author qualified?
Is the author an expert?
Does the author have bias? (Remember that a bias may not be directly stated.)
If no author is listed, why?

Host
Who hosts the site?
What is their purpose?
Does the host have bias?  (Remember that a bias may not be directly stated.)
What is the domain extension? This can help you determine how reputable a website is. For example, .gov is the domain for United States government sites and .edu is for US Educational institutuions.

Sources
Does the site provide its sources?
Does it refer/link you to other credible sources?
Is the information able to be cross-referenced?

Currency
Is the site regularly updated?