The credibility of information on the Internet: criteria stated and criteria used by Mexican studentsI

The frequency of Internet use for purposes of study among the young and children highlights the need to use medium-specific criteria of credibility. The issue is of concern in education and has been investigated mainly by means of multiple choice surveys. The originality of this work is the design and implementation of a tool that allows approaching the inconsistencies between declarative data and data close to the decisions made when in action. TICómetro ® is an online survey applied to 628 Mexican students, aged 14 to 18 years. We analyzed four of the twenty-six questions in the survey. One of them brings a multiple choice list of criteria for assessing the credibility of information; the other three questions require the selection of credible websites, based on images taken from the Internet (screen shots). Such procedure is closer to the actual search on the screen and it allows comparing the criteria stated to the criteria actually used. Statistical analysis of the data shows that the stated criteria do not match those used when selecting credible websites, in both age groups. However, there were significant differences between the two age groups with respect to the criteria. Another contribution of this study is the proposal of a new grouping of declarative data using the classical distinction between text and paratext, from literary theory, with the necessary adjustments to deal with informational texts in the digital space