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The Genealogical Proof Standard: A Plain-English Checklist
The GPS is the framework the Board for Certification of Genealogists uses to evaluate whether a genealogical conclusion is actually supported. Five elements, explained without the jargon.
1. Reasonably exhaustive research
Have you searched a reasonably broad range of sources likely to contain relevant information before drawing a conclusion? “Reasonably” doesn’t mean every possible source exists somewhere and you’ve found it — it means an experienced researcher would consider the search adequate for the claim being made. A file can show whether core events (birth, death, marriage) are present at all and whether you have a reasonable range of sources relative to the people in your tree — it can’t see research you did outside your genealogy software, like a library visit or a family interview that was never entered.
2. Complete and accurate citations
Every fact used to support a conclusion should trace back to a specific source — not just a source sitting somewhere in your file, but one linked directly to the event. See how to audit your source citations for the specific chain (title, page reference, quality rating) that makes a citation complete.
3. Analysis and correlation of evidence
Do the records actually fit together? This covers chronological plausibility (a birth can’t come after a death), biological plausibility (implausible parental ages), and weighing the quality of your sources against each other. See finding conflicting dates in a GEDCOM for the specific patterns to check.
4. Resolution of conflicting evidence
When two records disagree, that conflict has to be surfaced and explained, not left unresolved. A direct conflict is two records that explicitly contradict each other on the same fact — one says 1845, another says 1847. An indirect conflict is harder to spot: records that don’t explicitly contradict but are difficult to reconcile without explanation, like a stated age that drifts more than expected across census records. Potential duplicate individuals and children linked to more than one parent family fall into this element too — each needs a note explaining whether the records describe the same person or different people, and why.
5. A soundly reasoned, written conclusion
The GPS’s fifth element is a written narrative that explains how your evidence supports your conclusion and how you resolved any conflicts along the way. A GEDCOM file can carry that narrative — the GEDCOM 7 specification allows research notes, alternative interpretations and reasoning in NOTE structures on a person or a source — but a note being present does not make the argument sound, and KinSift’s GPS-05 check does not evaluate whether the reasoning holds up. What KinSift’s check can show is whether your evidence is ready to support that conclusion: are core events well cited, and do you have more than one independent source behind the key facts. That’s evidence readiness, not proof itself — judging the written conclusion stays the researcher’s job.
What a GEDCOM file can and can’t show you
A file-based check is useful for the first four elements because they leave structural traces — events, citations, dates, relationships — that a scan can read. The fifth element may sit in a note; KinSift reads note text, but its GPS-05 check does not assess whether the argument in it is sound. Any tool, including KinSift, that tells you your GEDCOM file is “GPS certified” or “proof complete” is overstating what a tree file can show. What it can honestly tell you is whether the first four elements look solid, and whether your evidence is in shape to write the fifth yourself.
Want to see this against your own tree? Upload a GEDCOM and KinSift checks the structural evidence behind it across the five GPS-aligned categories, including whether it is ready for a written conclusion — free, no signup, no card.
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