Judging the Veracity of Web Sites

People vary considerably in their competency levels depending on the web sites' topic. Does this knowledge influence their ability to make judgements? In order to see if we could discover a relationship between judgments, confidence, and knowledge of the topic, we conducted a study using participants who already possessed considerable evaluation skills and were sophisticated users of the World Wide Web. We picked a topic that that some of our participants would know very well and some of the participants would know very little about. Participants were ask to rate whether the web sites were considered objective and accurate, mistaken, or purposely misleading and give reasons for their decision. We found that the confidence ratings varied considerably with expertise but the judgments themselves did not. This gives educators hope that evaluation skills may be taught that are general enough that students can apply them to a variety of web sites.