I have decided, because my career goal is to become a Neonatal Nurse Practitioner (NNP), that I will investigate the role and job outlook for this position—to educate myself and to produce a source evaluation paper at the same time. Since I have had to look for sources before, I know that the online database ProQuest is an excellent way to find reliable and credible sources. The title of the source that I found on ProQuest is called “Working Together: Neonatal Nurse Practitioners in Practice” written by Redshaw M. and Harvey M.. This source is an academic journal article which examines the role of NNP’s.
The first step I will take in evaluating if this source is a reliable one to use is to look at two things—the date and type. On page 121 of our book it shows that the date and type of source you use will determine its reliability/credibility. The book suggests to use recent sources and that for example, something that was written in 1975 or before, may not be as reliable as up-to-date research; because my article was written in 2002 the role and job outlook for the position of a Neonatal Nurse Practitioner may have changed, so I would not consider this article as the most reliable one to use in that context. As for the source type, there is an inverted pyramid that lists the type of sources there are with the most preferred sources to use at the top of the pyramid; because my source falls third from the top as a scholarly article I would consider it a credible source because although it is not the most recent, our book on page 124, says that we should feel confident when using a scholarly article because, “the authors of journal articles write for academic honor, they document all sources, and they publish through university presses and academic organizations that use a jury to judge an article before its publication (James D. Lester & James D. Lester Jr.).” This assures me that the source is of great academic credibility.
The next