User talk:Katiepierce14

Welcome!

Hello, Katiepierce14, and welcome to Wikipedia! My name is Shalor and I work with Wiki Education; I help support students who are editing as part of a class assignment.

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If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me on my talk page. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 21:19, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

Response

Hi! My response is a little late - I've been kind of swamped lately. Here are my notes:

• Since this deals with psychology, I need to make sure that you've taken this training module on editing on psychological and self topics, as there are very specific sources that you should and shouldn't use when editing in this area.

• Some of the writing is written more as a reaction/reflection on the specific topic, which poses an issue of original research and subjectivity. I've edited this down to be a little more neutral.

• I noticed that one of the sources is a study - this poses an issue because it's a primary source for any of the claims and research created by its authors. There's also an issue in that the study was from 1995, so its findings may be outdated since marketing can greatly change over time. Studies should generally be avoided unless they're accompanied with a secondary source that reviews the study or comments upon the specific claim that is being stated. The reason for this is that studies are primary sources for any of the claims and research conducted by their authors. The publishers don't provide any commentary or in-depth verification, as they only check to ensure that the study doesn't have any glaring errors that would invalidate it immediately. Study findings also tend to be only true for the specific people or subjects that were studied. For example, a person in one area may respond differently than one in an area located on the other side of the country. Socioeconomic factors (be they for the person or a family member) also play a large role, among other things that can impact a response. As such, it's definitely important to find a secondary source, as they can provide this context, verification, and commentary. Aside from that, there's also the issue of why a specific study should be highlighted over another. For example, someone could ask why one study was chosen as opposed to something that studied a similar topic or had different results.

Now while you didn't use it to back up medical and psychological claims per se, be very careful with popular culture sources and make sure that you're only using them to back up things like historical claims. The reason for this is that popular culture sources may not always be accurate, either accidentally or purposely. You can read more about this here.

I've edited this down some to resolve these issues, but you can re-add some content as long as the above concerns are resolved. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:43, 5 March 2020 (UTC)