Corroborating students’ self-reports of source evaluation

Students were asked to report their typical practices with regard to source evaluation using the Credibility Assessment Scale (CAS). Students’ reports were validated against behavioural and cognitive indicators of source evaluation. Specifically, while researching a social science prompt, students’ source use behaviours, related to text evaluation, were logged. Following task completion, students were asked to rank the trustworthiness of the information sources they accessed and to justify their rankings. The criteria students cited for rankings of text trustworthiness were considered to be cognitive-based indicators of source evaluation, and mapped onto CAS items. Limited correspondence was found between students’ reported engagement in verification-related behaviours and either the behaviours manifest during task completion or the criteria for source evaluation cited at post-task. At the same time, a correspondence was found among behavioural and cognitive aspects of source evaluation, within the context of a specific task. This study is unique in directly corroborating self-reported, behavioural, and cognitive measures of source evaluation and examining these within the context of a rich and naturalistic multiple text task. Implications for research and practice are discussed.