Critical Questions for Analysing Maps

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How to evaluate Bases? Critical Questions

Assertion

How reliable is the person who made this claim?

• Could that person be mistaken in some way?

o Could they be mis-remembering?

o Are they in a position to know?

• Is that person impartial? Could they have a reason to lie or misrepresent information?

• How reliable is that person?

Is the claim something that could count as knowledge, or is it merely someone's personal opinion?

By Definition

• Is the definition clear?

• Does everyone agree with this definition?

• Could two people mean something different by these expressions?

Case Study

• Is the case study relevant?

• Does the case study provide a good basis or analogy for the claim?

• Do the results of the case study concur with the claim being made?

Common Belief

• Is this belief true or is it just a popular opinion, common misunderstanding or stereotype?

• Is this belief really held widely across the whole population?

• Is this belief well founded?

• Is this belief free of serious dispute?

• If the claim is a common generalization, is it true or acceptable in this instance?

Data

• How reliable are the data?

• How likely is it that the data could contain errors?

• Could the data have been tampered with?

• Were the data collected using a reliable and appropriate research method?

• Are the data relevant, and do they really support the claim?

Event

• Is the event relevant?

• Who reported the event and are they reliable?

• Does the event support the claim or provide an appropriate analogy?

Example

• How relevant is the example?

• Is one example sufficient to establish the claim? (Sometimes a single example is enough to establish a claim; at other times it isn't.)

Expert Opinion

• Is the expert

o a genuine expert in an area relevant to the claim (i.e. do other experts recognize his or her expertise)?

o sincere?

o trustworthy and disinterested (i.e. free of conflicts of interest)?

o in a reasonable position to make this claim (e.g. if the claim is a prediction or hypothesis)?

o justifiably confident of the truth of this claim?

• Is the claim seriously disputed by other experts in the field?

Law

• Is this Act or precedent relevant to the claim?

• Has the law been superseded?

• Do the details of the claim in question match the requirements of the law?

Media

• Is this media report reliable?

• Has the media report been manipulated in some way, for example, propaganda or commercial interest?

• Is the media form a genuine information source or does it provide mere gossip and innuendo?

• Does the media information provide a balanced view?

Publication

How reliable is this publication?

• How respected or respectable is the author in the relevant field?

• How respected or respectable is the publisher? "t

• If the publication is on the internet, is it made available on a reliable institution's website?

• If the publication is a journal, is it refereed or is everyone accepted for publication?

• How recent is the publication? Could the information be out of date?

Quote

• Is this quote genuine, or is the person being misquoted or quoted out of context?

• Is the quote relevant to the claim above it?

• Does the quote really support (e.g. substantiate or illustrate) the claim?

Remember that when you are evaluating a quote as a basis for a claim, you are not just saying, for example, "It's true that this quote was made by Shakespeare in Macbeth"; rather you are saying, "This quote provides solid/shaky/nil support for the claim above".

Statistic

How reliable is the statistical evidence?

• Are the statistics based on reliable data?

• Was the sample used for the statistics sufficiently large and representative of the population about which it generalizes?

• Are the statistics recent?

• Are there other statistics in this area that show very different results?

• Does the statistic come from a trustworthy, objective, unbiased and disinterested source (i.e. where there is no conflict of interests)? (E.g. who financed the study and why?)

• How big is the leap from the analysis of the data to the conclusion or findings?

o Does the interpretation of the data rely on questionable assumptions?

o If the claim is about a causal link, is there evidence of causation or merely correlation?

Web Resource

• Does the website provide reliable information for the claim being made? (Think about whether it is a .com, .edu or .org address).

• Who operates this website? Are they a credible source?

• Does this website provide balanced views or only one view?

Rationale Online
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8 years ago

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Critical Questions for Analysing Maps

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