Effective Research Techniques Finding Reliable Sources for Your Accounting Assignments.

When researching for your accounting assignments, it’s crucial to ensure your sources are credible. This means they are unbiased, backed by facts, and provide reliable information. It can be tempting to rely on a source that perfectly aligns with your research or seems like an easy solution for your accounting homework. However, always maintain a healthy scepticism until you verify the source’s credibility. Now there are five things in particular that you wanna look for:

1. Currency

This is simply the timeliness of the information. When you’re checking for this you want to look to see when the source was last published. So unless you’re researching something that is specifically supposed to analyse the past, a rule of thumb is that a good source is one that was published within the last 10 years. This is especially important when you’re researching accounting assignments online. 

To determine whether or not a source is current or not, here are a few qualifying questions you can ask: 

• Is the information current or out of date regarding your topic?
• When was the information published?
• Are the links on this website functional?

These questions can help you see the classic signs of an outdated website or an article. So it’s something you wanna be aware of.

2. Relevancy

Relevancy is simply the importance of the information for your needs. In other words, you want to make sure that you’re reading a source that’s providing you with information that is compatible, applicable, and related to your topic. We can all relate to finding the perfect article that fits your topic, but it’s off just a little bit. This is where you might be tempted to use that source but maybe omit a few details. Never do this you would be including false information in your assignments, which you don’t want a chance of losing points for. 

For example, you need help with accounting homework, and you find this well-organised article that fits that assignment’s question exactly. If you want to use it, however, if the conclusion of the article differs from your understanding, then that article would not be relevant to your assignment. 

So when checking to make sure that an article is relevant here are a few qualifying questions you can ask

• Does the information that’s being presented relate to your assignment?
• Who is the intended audience?
• Is the information at an appropriate level for your assignment? 

All of these questions combined will give you a good feel for how applicable the information and the source will be for you and your needs. 

3. Authority

It’s the author’s credibility to be writing about the topic. In other words how qualified are they to be saying what they’re saying to be presenting this information? Some of the most common things you can look for are the author’s credentials or their affiliations. Like are they writing from an official government website or a college website, or is it their website? 

For example, if you need accounting assignments help, are getting the data from someone’s personal blog where much of the information is based on small-scale projects, or are you using an official established website such as a government website where their data would be of a wider scale and transparent?

So some questions that you can ask yourselves: 

• Are there any credentials or affiliations listed for that author?
• If yes, what are those credentials and affiliations?
• How is the author qualified to talk about his topic?
• Does the URL reveal the source?

For instance, some common credible domains will use things like .edu, .govt, etc. So it’s important to be aware of these questions and their answers. 

4. Accuracy

The fourth thing is checking for the accuracy of the information. In other words, what they’re saying is actually correct, can it be backed up by real facts? As a rule of thumb, when you’re checking for accuracy you wanna be aware of vague phrases. For example, if someone writes recent studies, but there’s no recent study to show what they’re writing. That’s a huge red flag. You should especially be aware of when a source uses an authority figure statement to gain credibility. So when you see something vague you always want to trail that down to find the sources that they’re referring to that back up their claim.  

For example, when someone offers you accounting assignment help in Australia, you should make sure they know the accounting practices in Australia and cite credible sources in your assignment. 

Some additional questions you can ask yourselves: 

• Is the information supported by real evidence?
• Where does the information come from?
• Has this information been reviewed by anyone else?

5. Purpose

The purpose is simply, why does this information exist? Here you wanna be really careful about bias. So let’s say you’re reading an article. Does it come from an accounting company that’s trying to promote its services or is it written by a qualified organisation like the PwC, Deloitte, etc. Where their purpose is mainly just to get facts out to the general public. Now something to be aware of is that just because it’s a qualified source doesn’t mean that the information they’re presenting won’t be biassed. It’s just you should be aware of its bias. It’s important to know the difference between a biased fact vs. a biased opinion that stated is a fact. 

So some questions you can ask yourselves:

• Does the author make their intentions clear? 
• What is the purpose of the information?
• Is the information fact? Or opinion? 

In conclusion, you should always be a little sceptical when doing research, especially research that’s done online. This is not about being difficult, it’s about being smart.