Finding information in health and lifestyle

1.4.3 R is for Relevance

Relevance is an important factor to consider when you are evaluating information. It isn?t so much a property of the information itself but of the relationship it has with your question or your ‘information need?. For example, if you are writing an essay about obesity in the United States, a book or website about health problems in Australasia would probably not be relevant. So there are a number of ways in which a piece of information may not be relevant to your query:

• geographical (It may relate to countries or areas which you are not interested in.)

• level (It may be too detailed/specialised or too general/simple for the level at which you are working.)

• emphasis (It may not contain the kind of information you are seeking ? this is often a question of emphasis, which may not be identifiable from a title, summary or abstract.)

Activity

You are helping your 6 year old child with some homework on dinosaurs. Together you do an internet search and you find these:

• LearnEnglish Kids  ? Dinosaur

• BBC Science and Nature ? Prehistoric Life

• Natural History Museum ? Dinosaurs

• Wikipedia ? Dinosaurs

• Tyrannosaurs

• Dinosaurs

Which do you think is most likely to be relevant and why?

Answer

We think that the LearnEnglish Kids or BBC Science and Nature ? Prehistoric Life sites are probably the most relevant for our purposes . They are clearly presented and at about the right level, in tone and detail, for our 6 year old. We might reject the Natural History Museum and Wikipedia sites on the grounds of level, because they may be too detailed and aimed at older children. We might reject the Dinosaurs site on the grounds of emphasis, because it is not appropriate to our needs.

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