We take it for granted that most questions can be answered with a few clicks of the mouse. You should be careful, however, when using the Internet for research purposes. You don’t need to be an expert to publish material on the Internet and many organisations have something to gain from pushing certain ‘facts’ forward. When using the internet for research you should always ask yourself the following questions:

• Who has written this information? Why? Has it been written by an expert? Has it been published by an organisation or individual with a biased point of view? Are they trying to sell you an idea, product or service?
• Is this opinion or fact? Many opinions are presented as facts, whereas in fact some questions have no right or wrong answer.
• How old is the information? What was true yesterday may not be true today. Wikipedia, for example, is being constantly updated but it still gets things wrong.
• Is this a trustworthy website? Anyone can buy domain names ending in co.uk/com/biz/net/eu but only official organisations can own domains ending in, for example, gov.co.uk or ac.co.uk. Has the organisation got a trustworthy reputation? The BBC and the Guardian follow strict journalistic standards and carry some authority. Other organisations do not.