Evaluating academic sources using S.P.E.A.R.

S.P.E.A.R. is a reference tool for students to use when critically evaluating an academic source. It works as a prompt for students to identify aspects of the source that they find convincing or otherwise. S.P.E.A.R. groups these aspects into five categories: Scope, Purpose, Evidence, Analysis, and Reasoning. Each category includes suggestions of specific evaluative questions that can be asked of a source. S.P.E.A.R. was inspired by, and is meant to be used alongside the C.R.A.A.P. Test (Blakeslee, 2004) and B.E.A.M. (Bizup, 2008).