Verifying Web-based Information

Dr. Overbey has conducted a quantitative and §qualitative study of how adult professionals verify §web-based information. To date, research on web use §consists of descriptive reports and prescriptive §approaches. What''s missing are descriptive reports §that offer potential prescriptive value. This §project addresses this gap by way of a survey study §and three think-aloud protocols. Survey results §show statistical significance in correlations §between the kinds of strategies used for verifying §web-based information and participants'' demographic §characteristics. These results provide a §theoretical rationale for selecting think-aloud §protocol participants. Protocol results show that §participants'' approaches to verifying web-based §information match up with some combination of §prescriptive approaches, which demonstrates §how and in what contexts these approaches become §operational. Finally, data show that participants'' §information recall as they review web-based §information plays a vital role in their ability to §make credibility assessments of this information, a §finding that illustrates the benefits of studying §web use in real time.