When searching for child health, development and parenting information, it's important to go to sites you can trust. Before you use a new site, take a moment to learn more about it - be critical. The best sites will give you reliable information based on solid research evidence and professional experience with children and families. The tips that follow will help you decide if a site is reliable and will help you do more effective searches.
Why is finding reliable sites important?
You use many different sources of information to help you raise your family, such as your pediatrician, friends and family you trust, and teachers who know your child. The Web is also a good source of useful information, but not all of it comes from sources like these that you can trust, and some of it may be inaccurate. When you make important decisions about your children and your family, you want to be sure you have good information, so you can make good decisions. To be sure you are getting the best, most accurate child development, educational, or health information, check to be sure a site is reliable before you use it.
What makes a site reliable?
Reliable sites are created and operated by professionals and organizations who use the latest research and who understand children's growth and development. Ask yourself these three important questions to decide if a site is reliable:
These pages contain information about the organization that produces the site. Colleges/universities and federal and state government agencies focused on children are highly reliable.
Example 1:
For other organizations, use About Us to check the Board of Directors or Staff to be sure they are qualified to provide child-rearing information. Qualifications should include advanced degrees (such as: Ph.D., M.D., M.S., R.N.), and/or research, clinical or professional experience with children (such as: parent educator, teacher, therapist, social worker, nurse, physician).
Example 2:
If you enter a site from a search and bypass the home page, you should be able to find a "Home" link at the top or bottom of the screen. On the home page there should be an "About Us" link at the top, side or bottom of the screen. If you can't find out anything about a site, be extremely cautious about using it.
facts, suggestions, and opinions presented on a site have a solid, up-to-date research base. References - titles of professional articles, research reports, and books used by the authors - should be used to show the research base for articles, stories, fact sheets and other information. Look for recently published articles and reports - this tells you that the most current knowledge was used to write the article. References may appear in a list at the end of an article or they may be noted within the article. They may also be in the form of links that connect to a reference list.
(such as: Ph.D., M.D., M.S., R.N.) and/or research, clinical or professional experience (such as: parent educator, teacher, therapist, social worker, nurse, physician). An author - and credentials — should appear at the beginning or end of an article or story. Some sites provide author links that give authors' names and credentials. Other sites have a separate list of site authors that you can access through About Us pages.
Example 4:
How to improve your searches.
For best search results, use more than one strategy. It is important to be flexible. Before you search, think for a moment about what exactly you want to know. Then keep trying different ways to find it. These four strategies used together will help you to find reliable sites with the information you need:
after the final dot. For example, the University of Minnesota URL is www.minn.edu, and the Parents Know URL is ParentsKNOW.mn.gov. Educational institutions use .edu, federal governmental agencies use .gov, and state agencies use .us (such as .state.mn.us). for this part of their URLs. Searching only these highly reliable domains is a quick and easy way to find information you can trust.
Use the "advanced search" option of your search engine to search only .edu and .gov domains. It's easy to do and means that your search results will contain only reliable sites. On Google, for example, click on "advanced search" on the main search screen. Then, enter your keywords in the top search box and find the "domain" box near the middle of the screen. Just type in .edu, .gov and click Google search for a list of only government and educational sites with the information you want.
The more specific your keywords are, the more useful your results will be. For example, instead of entering "chicken pox" you could enter "chicken pox symptoms", "chicken pox vaccine" or even a question like "When is chicken pox contagious?" If you place a phrase in quotes, the engine will look for that phrase instead of the individual words. For example, if you place the phrase "high-quality child care" in quotes, your search will return results with this exact phrase highlighted. This can also be done using advanced search options. Also, you can add the keywords "research" or "references" to find research-based information.
If your search results are not what you need, change or add to your keywords. Different keywords or combinations of keywords will bring up different sites and articles. Try to think of several ways to describe what you want to know about. For example, if you want information on discipline, you could try "disciplining children", "how to manage children's behavior", "teaching good behavior to children" or "how to handle children's behavior problems.
by clicking on "favorites" or 'bookmark" on your toolbar. Then you can refer to it when you have a question about your child's development. Use directories like ParentsKnow Across the Net to find reliable sites on many child-rearing topics. Across the Net>>
See Smart Searching to learn what makes a site reliable and how to improve your searches. Due to the expanding volume of information on the Web, parents and professionals... more info
Smart Searching was created by Nancy Martland, Ph.D. for MNParentsKnow.info. It is based upon concepts and research described in "Thinking Critically About the Internet: Suggestions for Practitioners", by Nancy Martland and Fred Rothbaum, published in Child Welfare, volume LXXXV, number 5, September/October, 2006.
Where does this site come from?
