Talk:Westat

Proposed Changes: Research Activities Section
Thank you for your responses to my previous COI requests. I appreciate all your guidance. I am specifically interested in updating the Research Activities section, as the information that is currently there is out of date. I was following the previous editors guidance when I formatted my references, but I have read the page you directed me to and have reformatted my suggested text for a rewrite of this section, which I have provided below. I hope that I have done this correctly, if not please advise. Many thanks.

Westat is a professional services company, which supports research in the fields of health, education, social policy, and transportation. Health studies areas include work in public health, behavioral and mental health   , as well as clinical trials , veteran’s health, epidemiology , and health communications. The Education area consists of technical assistance and program evaluation studies. Social policy research areas focus on children and families, criminal and juvenile justice , and marginalized populations. The Transportation Center concentrates on technology, safety, and travel behavior.

The Statistical unit has over 65 statisticians, including 10 Senior Fellows. Statistical research and methods area supports survey design, address-based sampling, small-area estimation, data analytics, and statistical disclosure control. Several Westat statisticians participate in the Joint Program in Survey Methodology (JPSM), a collaboration between the University of Maryland, the University of Michigan, and Westat. JPSM offers on-site and online graduate training in survey methodology, survey statistics, and data science.

Westat supports two software packages, WesVar and Blaise. The former is a variance estimation software while the latter is a survey processing system.

IRCreso (talk) 18:54, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

The references you have appended include the quote parameters activated. For these quotes to be included in the article word for word, it would be helpful if additional information about them were to be included. As they cover material issued in press releases, the additional items sought to be included would be the author's names. Please advise in all instances where this is the case. -- Spintendo  ᔦᔭ   15:51, 13 January 2018 (UTC)


 * Thank you! I did not mean to use the quote parameter, as there are no actual quotes from the referenced articles in my suggested text. I’ve revisited the way I was putting my references together and hope that I’m doing it correctly now! I’ve reopened the request with the updated references included, please let me know if this isn’t the proper way to do this. Thank you again for your guidance! IRCreso (talk) 17:24, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

Reply 20-FEB-2018
As far as the format of your request, everything appears to be fine, and nothing is missing or done incorrectly. So that part of the request is ok. As far as the information that you would like to have added to the article, I can see that it is quite varied, and it's obvious that the company does a lot of important work in several areas. When considering which pieces of information to add and which to set aside, it's important to remember that for an article to maintain a healthy status, it's best not to allow it to become a complete exposition of all possible details regarding a company's activities. A good practice to maintain is ensuring that information added to the article remains a of accepted knowledge regarding the subject. The direction to be going is towards making broad strokes, using terms and descriptions which are as generalized as can be. What we're looking for here is the big picture. Anything that takes us in the direction of variegated details, intricate explanations and numerous listings of company actions, motivations, strategies, and other ephemeral minutiae is most definately not the direction to be going.

Currently, you have four different research areas listed that the company supports. Each of these four areas is further subdivided into additional areas, the cumulative total arriving at eighteen sub areas. Even though these four research areas are delineated with their appurtenant eighteen sub areas as a singular whole, the edit request proposal still proceeds to describe yet another subdivision — a secondary unit, which at this point would more accurately be described as a tertiary unit — which itself is then further divided into no-less than ten additional sub-secondary-units.

This dizzying level of detail clearly does not align with the article information inclusion philosophy I just described. Thus, a reappraisal of your edit request in order to reorient the information in a more favorable direction would be most appreciated. Please advise when you're ready to proceed. Regards,      Spintendo       20:48, 20 February 2018 (UTC)