Cue

How strong is this approach?

How much effort will it take?

What tactics could I use?

Why am I looking for this information?

Strong

Easy to moderate

• Pause and reflect
• Review the requirements for the task at hand
• Seek additional information about the task if the requirements are unclear.

How did this come into my life?

Medium to strong

Easy to challenging

• Pause to acknowledge and check gut feelings about the initial appearance of the source
• Develop or reflect on a search strategy
• Go up stream
• Consider credible recommendations.

Is it easy to investigate?

Medium to strong

Easy to challenging

• Note whether it is easy to identify the format
• Check the about page for purpose and process information
• Check a few referenced sources
• Perform a few web searches to verify accuracy.

Do I know what this is?

Strong; Weak if asking "How does it look?" instead

Moderate

• Pause
• Look for obvious labels to indicate format
• Look for other indications of a known format
• Avoid judgements based on visual features that do not connect to format
• If no format can be discerned, move on to another cue.

Is this reviewed?

Medium to strong

Easy to challenging

• Look for labels, such as "peer reviewed"
• Look up a source in a search engine, library catalog, or in reference sources
• Check for an about page.

Does the creator know what they're talking about?

Medium to strong

Easy to moderate

• Look for information about the creator via the source itself
• Look for information about the creator using an outside reference source or search engine (lateral reading).

Does this information make sense?

Weak, except for subject experts

Often automatic; when mindfully considering, easy to challenging depending on level of subject expertise

• Pause and consider instinctive judgements
• If an expert, evaluate content
• If a non-expert, discard source if obvious poor quality or try another cue if not sure.