The Book to Evaluate
Now that you know what to look for to evaluate a book using the DAPPR Test rubric, it is helpful to see an example of evaluating a single book.
Let's say your research topic is about women's roles in Viking culture, and you find this book by Michelle Hayuer Smith called The Valkyries' Loom. It caught your attention because in the search results for books using OneSearch the description of the book said it "examines Viking textiles as evidence of the little-known work of women in the Norse colonies that expanded from Scandinavia across the North Atlantic in the ninth century AD." Before you decide to use it as a source for your research paper you need to evaluate whether it is a credible and relevant source using the DAPPR Test rubric.
D is for Date
For the date you need to look for the copyright date. It can be found on the verso page of the book (the backside of the title page).
The book was published in 2020, which is less than five years old and scores a 3 on the DAPPR rubric for Date.
A is for Author
In order to learn about the author, Michele Hayuer Smith, and whether she is an expert on women in Viking culture, you need to read the inside back flap and search the Internet (because she was not in the databases we discussed earlier). You find the website for where she works and discover she is a Research Associate in the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology at Brown University.
You also find an article on her by the Arctic Research Consortium of the United States (ARCUS).
You read that she is an anthropological archaeologist specializing in gender, textiles, dress, material culture studies, and Norse societies of the Arctic, including Vikings. She conducts research projects on these areas of interest and has received grant awards. She has a doctorate degree, with her doctoral research on Viking dress and cultural identity.
Based on this information, you determine she has a doctorate degree in the field of study, works at a University, and has research experience with this topic, which scores a 3 on the DAPPR rubric for Author.
P is for Publisher
You find the publisher at the bottom of the title page for the book. You see it was published by University Press of Florida. Based on it being a University Press, it scores a 3 on the DAPPR rubric for Publisher.
P is for Purpose
When considering the purpose of the book, you read the overview of the book and its author found on the publisher's website.
Because the book’s "groundbreaking study based on the author's systematic comparative analysis of the vast textile collections in Iceland, Greenland, Denmark, Scotland, and the Faroe Islands...provides new insights into how the women of these island nations influenced international trade by producing cloth," it is empirical research with the purpose of sharing unbiased new information and scholarship in the field of study. For this reason, it scores a 3 on the DAPPR rubric for Purpose.
R is for Relevancy
The overview of the book on the publisher's website and looking at the table of contents in the book can help you decide whether the information and the majority of the book is relevant to your topic about women's roles in Viking culture.
The book contains a well-researched study about how Viking women's role in making textiles influenced trade, national identities, and culture, making the vast majority of the information relevant to your topic. Based on this, it scores a 3 on the DAPPR rubric for Relevancy.
Adding Up the Scores
Now that you scored each of the five categories using the DAPPR rubric, you need to add up those five scores to get a total score. Then, use the scale below the rubric to determine whether the source is appropriate for your college-level research.
Adding up the points for our example evaluation of The Valkyries' Loom, we get a total of 15 points. This example is clearly an excellent source!
