Why STAR

criteria?
- Do STAR letters tell you something?
 Apply the STAR criteria to data
•Sufficiency:
- Is there enough evidence cited to support
the conclusion and make the audience accept
it?
- Can you draw a clear conclusion from a
sufficient amount of evidence or that the
evidence is poor and insufficient?
- Is the evidence complete and sufficient?? As
incomplete evidence breaks the data
sufficiency!
 Apply the STAR criteria to data

• Typicality:
- Is the chosen evidence representative and typical or
that the author made a general claim/judgement
based on a small or biased sample of a group?
- Did he ignore parts that might challenge a
conclusion by just relying on personal experiences?
- Is the data collected compatible with the purpose of
the study?
 Apply the STAR criteria to data
• Accuracy:
- Is the evidence accurate, up-to-date and true or that the
studies and statistics used by the author are produced in
a biased, subjective and/or reluctant way?
- Are the samples used to collect data well-chosen with
meaningful results OR that they represent random
variation?
- Do the samples used to collect data represent different
social classes, different communities, different
compositions and backgrounds (which makes them lose
accuracy)?
 Apply the STAR criteria to data
• Relevance:
- Is the cited evidence directly relevant to the claim used to
support and make this latter defensible or instead,
annoying and nonsense?
- Does the info address your topic, thesis and supporting
arguments?
- Is the level of difficulty appropriate, too elementary or too
advanced?
- Is the terminology used easy or complicated and hard to
understand?
- Are there any offensive or aggressive words?
• In addition to STAR, check the following:

- How new is the info?

- Is it out of date for your topic?
- Is the info credible? Or exaggerated and
not related to fact and reality?
- Is the article written by a known or novice
author?
etc.
 REMEMER when choosing Evidence:
- The way you select and frame evidence
depends on your purpose.
- The way you select and frame evidence will
be influenced by your beliefs, values and
assumptions.
- The way you select and frame evidence will
limit and control what your audience reads.
- The way you select and frame evidence will
influence how you move your audience
towards you angle of vision.
 ASK YOURSELF:
- How much space will you give to
supporting and contrary evidence?
- How much contextual and interpretative
comments will you add when presenting
data?
- Where will you place the contrary
evidence? Will you put it in subordinate
positions; for example, will the contrary
evidence appear in the main clause or in a
subordinate clause?
- Will you focus on lots of facts/statistics or
will you focus on a detailed case?
- What kind of influence does the way you
label and name data have on your reader’s
response to your data?
- What type of influence does your use of
imagery have on the reader’s response to
your data?
- How will you present numbers and
statistical data? (raw numbers or percentages,
median versus mean)