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The International Information & Library Review (2005) 37, 99–106

The InternationalInformation & Library Review

1057-2317/$ - sdoi:10.1016/j.i

�Correspondifax: +1 408 924

E-mail addrisshxb@zsu.edu

www.elsevier.com/locate/iilr

Evaluating the credibility of scholarly informationon the web: A cross cultural study

Ziming Liua,�, Xiaobin Huangb

aSchool of Library and Information Science, San Jose State University, One Washington Square, San Jose,CA 95192-0029, USAbDepartment of Information Management, Zhongshan University, Guangzhou, China 510275

Summary This study investigates how Chinese students make credibility assess-ments of web-based information for their research, and what evaluation criteriathey employ. Our findings indicate that presumed credibility, reputed credibility, andsurface credibility have a stronger impact on undergraduate students than ongraduate students in credibility assessment. Graduate students tend to valueexperienced credibility more than undergraduate students. Undergraduate studentspredominantly rely on author’s name/reputation/affiliation as well as websitereputation for their credibility evaluation. In contrast, graduate students focus morethan undergraduate students on information accuracy/quality. Similarities anddifferences in credibility assessment between American students and Chinesestudents are also discussed.& 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction

The arrival of Internet has a significant impact onthe way people gather information for researcharound the world. Most previous studies examinecredibility assessment by scholars and students inthe United States (Herring, 2001; Liu, 2004; Rieh,2002). However, credibility assessment of scholarlyinformation from people in other cultures remainslargely unexplored. Credibility perception is deeply

ee front matter & 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reservilr.2005.05.004

ng author. Tel.: +1 408 924 2500;2476.esses: zliu@slis.sjsu.edu (Z. Liu),.cn (X. Huang).

embedded in and heavily influenced by social andcultural contexts. Cultural differences may have astrong impact on credibility assessment. There is apressing need to understand how people fromdifferent cultures use scholarly information fromthe web to do assignments and conduct research.

The World Wide Web is becoming a pervasiveresource for scholars and students in China.Credibility assessment is increasingly important asscholars and students use the web to carry out avariety of research activities. According to a recentstudy (Dong, 2003), ‘‘research papers’’ and ‘‘latestdevelopments’’ are reported as the two mostheavily accessed information resources from theweb by scholars and students in China. Like

ed.

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Z. Liu, X. Huang100

students in other countries, students in China arealso faced with decisions about the Internetinformation they choose to use for their research.We attempt to find out how undergraduate studentsand graduate students in China make credibilityassessments, the evaluation criteria they use, andthe similarities and differences in the credibilityassessment between Chinese undergraduate stu-dents and graduate students. Given the Western-orientation of most previous studies, we alsoexplore the similarities and differences in cred-ibility evaluation between American students andChinese students. We attempt to answer thesequestions by conducting a comparative study ofundergraduate students and graduate students inChina. Then we compare results from the surveywith the results from another parallel study onAmerican students (Liu, 2004).

Review of related literature

Credibility can be simply defined as believability.Credible information is usually referred to asbelievable information (Fogg et al., 2001). Peopletend to use multiple criteria to arrive at a finalcredibility assessment. Credibility is a very complexconcept. It is almost inseparable and indeed closelyrelated to trustfulness, reliability, accuracy,authority, and quality (Rieh, 2002).

A number of studies find that the criteria used inevaluating information on the web are quite similarto those used in the print environment (Brandt,1996; McMurdo, 1998). Fritch and Cromwell (2001)argue that many people fail to properly evaluateweb-based information largely due to a lack ofunderstanding of authority. They attempt to pro-vide a theoretical framework for assessing informa-tion on the web with regard to cognitive authority.Rieh and Belkin (1998) examine information qualityand cognitive authority ratings used by scholars forassessing Internet information. They identify thefollowing seven major quality criteria on web-based information: source, content, format, pre-sentation, currency, accuracy, and speed of load-ing. Rieh (2002) reports that scholars perceivecognitive authority when the information looks‘‘scholarly,’’ and they tend to give higher authorityto academic institutions and government agencies,but lower authority to commercial sites. In a surveyof faculty satisfaction of the Internet as a researchsource, Herring (2001) finds that although facultywelcome the vast quantity of information, many ofthem are concerned about the reliability andaccuracy of Internet information. Faculty members

from science disciplines tend to be more positiveabout the reliability of web-based information thando faculty in the social sciences, or language andliterature areas.

Tseng and Fogg (1999) identify four types ofsource credibility in assessing information on theweb: presumed credibility (e.g., stereotypes andwell-respected websites), reputed credibility (e.g.,author’s affiliation with a prestigious institutionand official titles), surface credibility (e.g., docu-ment layout), and experienced credibility (e.g.,judgment based on prior experience—publicationof the same document in a printed journal). Liu(2004) finds that two other types of sourcecredibility (verifiable credibility and cost-effortcredibility) play a significant role in shapingstudents’ perceptions of credibility.

The advent of the Internet as a new and widelyused channel for the delivery of information raisesthe question of the credibility of information.Making appraisals of the credibility of informationbecomes a challenging task for most users. Highschool students and college students frequentlyturn first to the web for school-related tasks.However, most of them are not aware of thedistinctions between materials on the web andpeer-reviewed journals (Tenopir, 2003). Grahamand Metaxas (2003) find that many undergraduatestudents use the Internet as a primary source ofinformation, usually with little regard to theaccuracy of that information. Grimes and Boening(2001) also warn that there are an ever-increasingnumber of students using unevaluated Internetinformation at the expense of traditional printmaterials. Friedlander (2002) finds that 75.4% ofrespondents agree with the statement—‘‘TheInternet provides high-quality information’’—and45.9% of respondents are using Internet informationwithout any additional verification.

In a study comparing how experts and consumersevaluate the same health and finance sites,Stanford, Tauber, Fogg, and Marable (2002) findthat experts evaluate content carefully whileconsumers tend to rely on visual appeal for muchof their credibility appraisal.

Cross cultural comparisons with regard to theperception of web credibility have begun receivingattention. Fogg et al. (2001) find that respondentsfrom Finland report lower credibility rating forwebsites that convey commercial implications.However, compared to Finns, US respondents assignhigher credibility to websites using tailoring tech-nology and to websites that convey expertise andtrustworthiness.

Dong (2003) examines the use of Internetinformation from the perspective of Chinese

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Evaluating the credibility of scholarly information on the web: A cross cultural study 101

students and scholars. She finds that the youngergeneration with advantaged degrees tend to spendmore time on the Internet and give higher evalua-tion ratings on the usefulness of Internet informa-tion. She also finds that accuracy and authority arethe most important factors when users judge thequality of the Internet.

Methodology

This study is an extension of one of the authorsearlier study on US students’ perceptions ofcredibility of scholarly information on the web(Liu, 2004). The format of this study is based on themethods for that study.

Stereotypes are cognitive structures that containaccumulated knowledge and beliefs about particu-lar social groups. Expectancies about others areoften based on stereotypes of groups to which theybelong. As noted by Hamilton, Sherman, and Ruvolo(1990), ‘‘stereotype-based expectancies can influ-ence the way we process the information wereceive, seek additional information, and guideour behavioral interactions with others. Theseprocesses have important functional values as weadapt to our social world. In addition, however,they present the potential for bias and hence theopportunity for error.’’ People in credibility assess-ment are active information seekers instead of

Table 1 Credibility assessment of Chinese students (N ¼

Variables

1. The document content is consistent with what I believ2. The document contains a lot of interesting information3. The document content is trustworthy4. The document content is of good quality5. The author is affiliated with a prestigious institution6. The author is a famous expert7. The document has multiple authorship8. I read articles by the author(s) in printed journals9. The document has a nice layout10. The document contains credentials of the author(s)11. The document contains a picture of the author(s)12. The document includes tables and graphs13. The document includes references14. The document is a long document15. The document contains links that do not work16. The document is hosted on a website in an advanced17. The document is posted in a well-respected website18. The document was also published in a printed journal19. The document is linked by a trusted source20. The document contains a meter indicating the numbe

passive information receivers. Stereotype-basedexpectancies can influence credibility assessmentin several ways. Stereotype-based expectanciesmay lead people to focus on certain kinds ofinformation while ignoring other kinds. For exam-ple, stereotype-based expectancies may result inpeople in developing countries blindly valuinginformation from certain highly developed coun-tries while ignoring valuable information fromdeveloping countries. Therefore, a cross-culturalanalysis of credibility assessment should deal withstereotype-based expectancies. This parallel studyuses similar survey questions as Liu (2004). Avariable is added in order to examine how Chinesestudents perceive credibility of information hostedon a website in an advanced country when they aremaking credibility judgments.

A cluster of 20 questions (see Table 1) is used tomeasure the dimensions of credibility. A 7-pointLikert-type scale for each of the 20 questions isused. This format allows respondents to select aresponse from ‘‘�3’’ (least credible) to ‘‘+3’’ (mostcredible). Moreover, the following questions areincluded in order to gather open-ended thoughtsabout evaluative criteria. These open-ended com-ments are grouped in 10 categories and presentedin Fig. 1.

�

14

e

cou

r o

What are the 3 most important criteria you usein evaluating the credibility of scholarly infor-mation on printed media?

5).

Graduate mean(N ¼ 74)

Undergraduatemean (N ¼ 71)

1.42 1.270.73 0.721.50 1.251.05 1.300.89 0.960.90 1.060.81 0.631.05 0.820.50 0.720.47 1.040.18 �0.101.11 0.961.66 1.460.59 0.93

�0.54 �0.69ntry 0.03 0.54

1.24 1.541.56 1.231.20 1.08

f visits 0.38 0.46

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10.8%

54.1%

44.6%

16.2%

2.7%

54.1%

6.8%

20.3%

24.3%

59.5%

28.2%

77.5%

25.3%

2.8%

21.1%

81.7%

5.6%

7.0%

15.5%

31.0%

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

Information

Information Content

Information Bias

Motivation

Name/Reputation/Affliation

Layout

Com

men

t Cat

egor

y

Percent of Comments

Writing Tone

Information Source

Website Reputation

Usage & Evaluative Comments

Accuracy/Quality

Graduate Undergraduate

Figure 1 Criteria used in credibility assessment.

Z. Liu, X. Huang102

�

What are the 3 most important criteria you usein evaluating the credibility of scholarly infor-mation on the web?

�

When you assess the credibility of scholarlyinformation on the web, what features makethe information credible?

�

When you assess the credibility of scholarlyinformation on the web, what features makethe information less credible?

Two hundred copies of the questionnaire weredistributed to students at Zhongshan University(Guangzhou, China) either in class, at studentdormitories, or at the student center during springand summer of 2004. Participants in this study areundergraduate students and graduate studentsfrom diverse disciplines such as business adminis-tration, computer science, economics, history, law,library and information science, mathematics,political science, and sociology. Participants wereasked to fill out the questionnaire based on theirexperiences in selecting web-based information forresearch purposes. One hundred and forty-fivecompleted copies were returned: 74 copies fromgraduate students and 71 from undergraduatestudents. Survey results are presented in Table 1.

Compared to face-to-face surveys, self-adminis-tered questionnaires have certain inherent limita-tions such as lower response rates and possible

confusion with survey questions. A pilot project wasconducted in December 2003. On the other hand,since most undergraduate students and graduatestudents in China possess good command of English,the questionnaire includes English and Chinesetranslations with the goal of achieving the greatestdegree of consistency and comparability with theearlier study by Liu (2004). The mean credibilityratings by undergraduate students and graduatestudents are presented in Table 2.

Findings and discussion

Credibility assessment: undergraduatestudent vs. graduate students in China

The first four variables are related to credibilityperceptions of information content. According toTable 1, there are very positive responses onvariable 1, 3 and 4, indicating that resonance withone’s beliefs, trustworthiness, and quality aredeemed as positive contributors to credibility byboth undergraduate students and graduate stu-dents in China. Documents containing a lot ofinteresting information (variable 2) add credibility,even though the impact is weak (0.73 for graduatestudents and 0.72 for undergraduate students).

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Table 2 Credibility perceptions: American students vs. Chinese students.

Variables Chinesestudents mean(N ¼ 145)

Americanstudentsa mean(N ¼ 128)

1. The document content is consistent with what I believe 1.34 1.132. The document contains a lot of interesting information 0.72 1.213. The document content is trustworthy 1.38 1.284. The document content is of good quality 1.17 1.255. The author is affiliated with a prestigious institution 0.92 1.366. The author is a famous expert 0.98 0.917. The document has multiple authorship 0.72 0.608. I read articles by the author(s) in printed journals 0.94 0.869. The document has a nice layout 0.61 0.7610. The document contains credentials of the author(s) 0.75 0.7811. The document contains a picture of the author(s) 0.04 0.0312. The document includes tables and graphs 1.03 0.1613. The document includes references 1.57 1.6314. The document is a long document 0.76 0.3815. The document contains links that do not work �0.61 �1.0316. The document is hosted on a website in an advanced country 0.28 NA17. The document is posted in a well-respected website 1.39 1.4618. The document was also published in a printed journal 1.39 1.7119. The document is linked by a trusted source 1.14 1.1820. The document contains a meter indicating the number of visits 0.42 �0.46

aNote: data of American students are derived from Liu (2004).

Evaluating the credibility of scholarly information on the web: A cross cultural study 103

Variables 5–8 assess the importance of author-ship. All scores are positive, ranging from 0.81 to1.05 for graduate students and from 0.63 to 1.06for undergraduate students. This indicates thatboth groups view the reputation of authors,institutional affiliation, and multiple authorship aspositive indicators of credibility. In a similar studyof credibility perceptions by American students, Liu(2004) finds that author affiliation with a presti-gious institution is considered a more positivecredibility indicator than an author who is a famousexpert (1.36 vs. 0.91), and freelance publications(no affiliation) are considered less credible. Rieh(2002) also finds that web users’ judgments ofquality and authority are influenced more by theinstitutional level of source than by the individuallevel. Table 1 shows that there are no significantdifferences in credibility rankings between institu-tional affiliation (variable 5) and author’s reputa-tion (variable 6) by these two groups of Chinesestudents.

Variables 9–15 pertain to the impact of documentlayout and structure on credibility assessment.Both groups view documents providing referencesas a strong positive contributor to credibility, anddocuments containing broken links as a negativefactor leading to reduced credibility. Undergradu-ate students tend to value attractive layouts,

inclusion of credentials, and length of documentsmore than graduate students. However, graduatestudents assign higher credibility ratings to docu-ments containing the author’s picture and todocuments including tables and graphs than under-graduate students.

Variables 16–20 are mostly related to websitereputation and usage. Both groups give highcredibility ratings to documents hosted in a well-respected website, linked by a trusted source, orpublished in a printed journal. Documents contain-ing a visit meter (variable 20) are perceived assomewhat positive by both groups of students. It isinteresting to note that undergraduate studentsassign a higher value to documents hosted in anadvanced country website than do graduate stu-dents (0.54 for undergraduate students and 0.03 forgraduate students).

Among the 20 variables in this survey, the twomost significant differences in credibility ratingbetween graduate students and undergraduatestudents are ‘‘The document contains credentialsof the author(s)’’ (0.57) and ‘‘The document ishosted on a website in an advanced country’’(0.51), followed by ‘‘The document is a longdocument’’ (0.34). It seems that presumed cred-ibility, reputed credibility, and surface credibilityhave a stronger impact on undergraduate students

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Z. Liu, X. Huang104

than on graduate students in credibility assess-ment.

Another notable difference between the twogroups of students is in variable 18, ‘‘The documentwas also published in a printed journal’’. Docu-ments published in printed journals add credibilityfor undergraduate students (1.23), but are not assignificant for graduate students (1.56).

The criteria used in evaluating scholarly informa-tion on the web do not seem very different fromthose used for printed media. When studentsevaluate the credibility of scholarly informationon the web, they frequently focus on criteria suchas institutions which host the website, author’saffiliation/reputation as well as content. Fig. 1compares comments from undergraduate and grad-uate students on the three most important criteriaused in credibility evaluation. The three mostfrequently used criteria by these two groups arequite similar: information accuracy/quality,author’s name/reputation/affiliation, and websitereputation. However, the groups differ greatly inthe extent of employing these three criteria.Undergraduate students predominantly rely onauthor’s name/reputation/affiliation as well aswebsite reputation for their credibility assessment,and they weigh more heavily than graduatestudents the author’s name/reputation/affiliation(81.7% vs. 54.1%) and website reputation (77.5% vs.54.1%). In contrast, graduate students focus morethan undergraduate students on information accu-racy/quality (59.5% vs. 31.0%).

Figure 1 also shows that graduate students tendto pay more attention than undergraduate studentsto information content, information bias, writingtone, and information sources. However, under-graduate students rely more than graduate stu-dents on layout as well as usage and evaluativecomments made by others. This finding is furtherconfirmed by another recent study. In a comparisonof how experts and consumers evaluate the samehealth and finance sites, Stanford et al. (2002) findthat experts evaluate content carefully whileconsumers tend to rely on visual appeal for muchof their credibility appraisal. It seems that levels ofexpertise may affect credibility assessment. Under-graduate students (especially first-year and second-year students) are more likely to seek evaluativecomments made by others to confirm their judg-ments. Documents not recommended by experts orthose that received bad reviews are considered lesscredible (see Table 3). Undergraduate students arealso more likely to rely more on factors related toreputation (e.g., author’s reputation and affilia-tion, website reputation) than to evaluate thecontent.

Credibility perception: American studentsvs. Chinese students

Table 2 compares data of mean credibility ratingsof graduate students and undergraduate students inChina with those made by US students. It isinteresting to note that the following variablesare deemed the three indicators with the highestcredibility by students in both countries:

�

The document includes references. � The document is posted in a well-respected

website.

� The document was also published in a printed

journal.

In addition, students in both countries assignsimilar credibility ratings to the following variablessuch as ‘‘The document content is trustworthy,’’‘‘The document content is of good quality,’’ ‘‘Thedocument contains credentials of the author(s),’’‘‘The document contains a picture of theauthor(s),’’ and ‘‘The document is linked by atrusted source.’’

There are a number of notable differences incredibility rating between Chinese students andAmerican students:

1.

Documents with visit meters are perceived assomewhat positive by Chinese students (0.42)while considered as somewhat negative by theirAmerican counterparts (�0.46). One possibleexplanation is that Chinese students tend tofocus on the usage of the documents whileAmerican students are concerned with themotive for showing the number of visits (seealso Fig. 1). According to Table 3, low usage islisted as a less credible feature by Chinesestudents.

2.

Another notable difference between Americanstudents and Chinese students is in the ‘‘Thedocument includes tables and graphs’’ variable,where Chinese students give greater credibilityto documents including tables and graphs thando American students (Chinese 1.03 vs. Amer-ican 0.16). It is also interesting to note that longdocuments are perceived as more credible byChinese students than by American students(Chinese 0.76 vs. American 0.38). Perhaps fromthe Chinese perspective, these features areindicatives of serious scholarly works. Onerespondent notes that good quality scholarlyworks are always supported by strong data ortheories. Short papers and papers lacking indetailed information are perceived as less

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Table 3 Less credible features perceived by American students and Chinese students.

By American students onlya By both American students andChinese studentsa

By Chinese students only

� If the site seems subjective anduses words like ‘‘I’’ or ‘‘in myopinion’’

� Multiple colors� Color graphs� Strange fonts� Broken images� Hosted on unknown or freelyavailable web host

� Lack of edu domain� Linked by a questionable orcommercial site

� If the author or sponsoringorganization will benefitfinancially by the spread of theinformation

� Lack of professionalism� Badly written/sloppy writing� Questionable statements/logicflaws

� Factual errors� Author’s beliefs differ from myown

� No author name is given� Freelance publication (noaffiliation)

� Poor layout and design� Absence of author credentials� Outdated links/bad links� Typos/ spelling errors� Presence of advertisements� No references included� Little information on whocreates the website

� Obscure domain names� Sites not recently updated

� Exaggerated content� Repetitive content� Biased content� Constantly changing content� Outdated content� Ideas cannot be found inauthoritative institutions

� Content differs from that hostedin other websites

� Lack of detailed information� Not supported by strong data ortheories

� Short papers� Messy structure� Documents appear in lessprestigious sites only

� Low usage� Small websites� Not recommended by experts� Documents received badreviews

aNote: data of American students are derived from Liu (2004).

Evaluating the credibility of scholarly information on the web: A cross cultural study 105

credible features by Chinese students (seeTable 3).

3.

Students in both countries show positive percep-tions of documents containing a lot of interest-ing information; however, American studentstend to perceive documents containing interest-ing information more credible than do Chinesestudents (American 1.21 vs. Chinese 0.72). Itseems that Chinese students are more critical ofdocument content. Extreme content and exag-gerated content are described as less credibleattributes by Chinese students (see Table 3).

4.

Sites containing links that do not work areperceived as more negative by American stu-dents (�1.03) than by Chinese students (�0.61).It would seem that Chinese students are moretolerant of documents with broken links thantheir American counterparts.

Conclusion

The immense amount of information readily avail-able from the web holds great promises as well aspresents unprecedented challenges. Because of theephemeral nature and the lack of traditional

refereed process, selecting credible informationfrom the sheer amount of information has becomea daunting task for most users. Teaching users howto effectively evaluate and use web-based informa-tion becomes an important educational objectivefor learners of all ages (Burbules, 2001). There is anincreasing awareness among library and informa-tion professionals of the need to educate users onhow to evaluate Internet information. Understand-ing credibility assessment in different culturalcontexts would enable library and informationprofessionals to improve user education and serveuser needs more responsively.

Even though efforts were made to attractparticipants from diverse academic disciplines inthis survey, it is very difficult to ensure a verybalanced representation across all disciplines.Since students in different academic disciplinesmay have different attitudes toward the use ofweb-based information for their studies, expansionof this study into exploring disciplinary differencesin credibility assessment will be necessary to fullyvalidate the findings.

This study investigates how Chinese studentsmake credibility assessments of web-basedinformation for their research, and what evalua-tion criteria they employ. As previously noted,

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Z. Liu, X. Huang106

credibility perception is deeply embedded in andheavily influenced by the social and culturalcontexts. Cultural differences may have a signifi-cant impact on credibility assessment. Futureresearch can extend the findings of this study byinvestigating similar research problems in differentcultural contexts.

People in credibility assessment are activeinformation seekers instead of passive informationreceivers. Stereotype-based expectancies can af-fect people’s attention to and interpretation ofinformation based on the pre-existing perceptionsand images. This study explores credibility percep-tions of documents hosted on a website in anadvanced country by Chinese students. Anotherpossible research approach might be to look at howpeople perceive information hosted in less devel-oped countries in their credibility assessments.

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