The Tree Health Assessment Tool helps you build a healthy family tree by working systematically through your conclusions, evaluating the strength of the evidence supporting each one, and documenting your assessment as you go.
A healthy family tree is an accurate family tree.
It is built on conclusions that are supported by sufficient genealogical evidence and a solid foundation.
How do you know whether your family tree is accurate?
Every relationship in your family tree is a conclusion based on evidence. If just one conclusion in the early generations is incorrect, you could spend years researching people who aren’t really your family.
My Tree Health Assessment Tool helps you work systematically through your family tree, evaluate the strength of the genealogical evidence supporting each conclusion, and identify where further research is needed.
What do I mean by ‘tree health’?
When I talk about the health of a family tree, I’m talking about the strength of the evidence supporting it.
Every family tree needs a solid foundation.
The first few generations are especially important because every conclusion beyond them depends on those earlier relationships being correct.
As you apply the Tree Health Assessment Tool, you establish multiple solid foundation points. Each one becomes a place you can confidently build from.
What is the Tree Health Assessment Tool?
The tool does not evaluate the evidence for you. Instead, it provides a structured way to work systematically through your family tree, prompting you to evaluate the evidence for each conclusion and record your assessment as you go.
There are two formats for the Tree Health Assessment Tool – a family tree chart format and a table format.
The chart format focuses on the identity of people in your tree and the relationships between them. The table format can focus on other conclusions about people in your tree.
The three colours indicate the strength of the evidence. Green means the evidence is strong, yellow means you need better evidence and red means you have no evidence.
The colours are not simply labels. They encourage you to stop, evaluate the evidence supporting each conclusion and decide whether it is strong enough before moving on.
The Tree Health Assessment Tool helps you:
- build a more accurate family tree
- identify weak foundations before they affect later generations
- work systematically through your conclusions
- reveal gaps and inconsistencies in the evidence
- plan family history research
- establish solid foundation points that you can confidently build from
- review your own research and the work of others
- document the strength of the evidence supporting your conclusions.
Articles about the Family History Tree Health Assessment Tool
Get started with these articles.
How do you know if you have an accurate family tree?
Family Tree Health Assessment Tool: Build a Solid Foundation
How to Apply the Family Tree Health Assessment Tool
Solve Brick Walls with the Tree Health Assessment Tool
Using Excel in family history to improve accuracy
Family History Source Citations That Support Your Conclusions