User:Amathu15/Evaluate an Article

Evaluate an article
This is where you will complete your article evaluation. Please use the template below to evaluate your selected article.


 * Name of article: Isabel Hampton Robb
 * Briefly describe why you have chosen this article to evaluate: Isabel Hampton Robb, according to sources, is a pioneer of Nursing in the United States. Hampton Robb worked as the Superintendent of Nurses and Johns Hopkins School of Nursing. I have selected this article to evaluate because of the affiliation of Isabel Hampton Robb to a branch of Johns Hopkins Medicine.

Lead

 * Guiding questions


 * Does the Lead include an introductory sentence that concisely and clearly describes the article's topic?
 * Does the Lead include a brief description of the article's major sections?
 * Does the Lead include information that is not present in the article?
 * Is the Lead concise or is it overly detailed?

Lead evaluation
The lead of this Wikipedia article is generally very concise but coherent. The Lead includes a strong introduction providing a general summary of the titles and professions Ms. Hampton is regarded for. What is powerful about this introductory sentences is that is suggests the organization of the Wikipedia article and the different aspects of Ms. Hampton that are not only covered in the article, but also that are significant to having a stronger understanding of who Ms. Hampton is. The sentences that follow effectively set up the different topics that will be covered in the article by giving a few different examples of the organizations she was apart off, the roles that she played as a member of these organizations, and the impact that she left on the different communities she was apart of. For example, the lead describes her role as the Superintendent of Nursing at Johns Hopkins, the medical textbooks she published, as well as organizations she founded such as the National League of Nursing. These few examples provide readers with a good idea that the article will present information on her career and role at Johns Hopkins, the Literature that she published, as well as the foundations which she pioneered. From these few lines, the article very accurately represents the organization of this article which in fact includes sections covering her career at Hopkins, her works and her legacy -- which includes the founding of these organizations. Thus, the lead is effective in presenting the structure of this Wikipedia article. Even while the lead is effective, it can be revised, particularly the last sentence. The last sentence of the introduction discusses her work in advancing the social status of nurses. After reading the entire article, there is no direct discussion of how her work changed the social status of nurses but rather how her work changed the structure of Nursing and Nursing education. I believe, that information about how her work changed the social status of nurses is very pertinent to this article. Thus, rather than changing this sentence it would be more important to include this information in the article. Aside from this minor criticism, I found that the lead section was very clear and concise, and used examples appropriately to provide context rather than to be overly detailed.

Content

 * Guiding questions


 * Is the article's content relevant to the topic?
 * Is the content up-to-date?
 * Is there content that is missing or content that does not belong?

Content evaluation
There seems to be many content gaps in this article. I believe that this is true given that the lead suggests that a number of topics would be covered in this article including her role at Johns Hopkins Nursing, the Literature she published, the foundations that she pioneered and her social impact in the medical community. However, I found that the articles coverage of these ideas is very weak. This could be in part a result of the poor organization of content in this article. I found that the article did a poor job at explaining the social impact of Hampton for Hopkins Nursing and Nursing in general. For example, in the section titled, Career at Johns Hopkins, the article mentions Hampton's book titled Nursing: Its Principle and Practice as well as example of content covered in this book such as a 3-year long Nursing curriculum and hygiene protocols. While readers could infer how these innovations and suggestions by Hampton changed the structure of Nursing education as well as the role of Nursing in the hospital, the article would benefit from more concrete evidence of the changes that occurred. Examples of evidence could be statistics of nursing pay, number of nurses employed or number of individuals pursuing nursing. Such evidence could demonstrate how Hampton's work encouraged growth of the Nursing industry. Along the same lines, the article has a significant amount of specific facts of organizations that she pioneered or was a member of (including the National League of Nursing and the American Nurses Association). While these organizations have a hyperlink to their own independent Wikipedia sites, this article about Isabel Hampton could include her specific contributions to these organizations and the consequences of her contributions. For example, the article mentions that Hampton was an American representative Matrons Organization. However, the article does not describe the contributions that she made or the projects and advancements that she contributed to through this organization. What also contributes to the content gaps of this article is that it is conveys information as if it is in a chronological list. This is prevalent in the section titled Later Life and Career. In this section, there is information about her marriage about 1894 and about her election as president of the American of the Nurses' Associated Alumnae of the United States and Canada in 1896. While all of these facts are relevant to Hampton's later career they lack any elaboration -- they are simply just stated facts. The role that she played, the contributions she made to these groups, or even the impact that these might have had on her would make such information more pertinent to the article. Certainly, most of the information is pertinent to the article, however there are quotes that are unnecessary and inappropriately used. For example, in the section titled Further Impact on the Nursing Field, there is a quote by Osler which describes his positive impression of her after interviewing her for a position. While it does not detract from the meaning of the article, it does distract from the overall purpose of the paragraph which is to detail her impact on Johns Hopkins Nursing. In conclusion, all of the information included in the article is up-to-date as all the references used were published between the years of 2008 to 2015.

Tone and Balance

 * Guiding questions

Includes an opinion that is factually supported, so therefore, therefore it is neutralized


 * Is the article neutral?
 * Are there any claims that appear heavily biased toward a particular position?
 * Are there viewpoints that are overrepresented, or underrepresented?
 * Does the article attempt to persuade the reader in favor of one position or away from another?

Tone and balance evaluation
After reading the article carefully, there is no evidence of any biased claims. In other words, I can conclude that the tone of the article in neutral and encyclopedic. I came to this conclusion after noting that the article organized the information as a chronological list. For example, in the section titled Later Life and Careers the article only briefly lists and describes key events that occurred in Hampton's lifetime following her career at Johns Hopkins, examples including the authoring of her books Nursing Ethics in 1900 and Educational Standards for Nurses in 1907. While there is a brief quote from a journal review of her novels which describes the general content of the book, there is no further information about its impact or its significance as compared to other Hampton's achievements. Thus, there is no place for any bias to be included. There is one instance in the article where a reader might suspect that a writer is attempting to interject his own opinion. This instance comes in the section Later Life and Careers where the author writes "The author books... particularly insists that for thorough training in nursing it is necessary that each nurse should be supplied with various additional which are quite distinct from, although supplementary to, the principles of nursing." While it might seem that this statement is the writers own interpretation of the novel, there is a citation attached to this fact and thus the statement in qualified and neutralized. Additionally, there is no bias apparent given the organization and structure of the article. While the section of article titled Early Life is significantly shorter than the sections describing her career, this is appropriate given that Isabel Hampton is most best known and remembered for her contributions to Nursing and thus this information is more significant to gaining an understanding about Hampton rather than her personal life. Given that there is no underlying bias in this article, one can conclude that the article does not attempt to persuade the reader in favor of any one position.

Sources and References

 * Guiding questions


 * Are all facts in the article backed up by a reliable secondary source of information?
 * Are the sources thorough - i.e. Do they reflect the available literature on the topic?
 * Are the sources current?
 * Check a few links. Do they work?

Sources and references evaluation
In the references section there are many sources which come from from a Johns Hopkins archive, journal or newspaper. For example, one source is from The Johns Hopkins Medical Institution's archive. This source only provides a short biography Hampton, only in terms of her career as the Superintendent of Johns Hopkins Nursing. Clearly, this article is likely to have some underlying bias given that Hampton is a well-regarded figure in Hopkins medicine. Thus, the article is likely to only present her in a positive light. Similarly, another source that is commonly cited in the article is a source from the JHU gazette which, once again, can provide information that is biased in favor of Hampton given her past associations. Even though both of these sources from Hopkins archives are secondary sources, there is definitely some bias in their viewpoints. However, since the information has been diluted, it is certainly not as biased as a primary source such as Hampton's own publications. Another source is from the ANA Hall of Fame. While this source can be very informative about her career and her accomplishments, it can be biased because it will most likely present her in a positive light as the Hall of Fame recognizes prestigious individuals for their successes. Thus there can be some underlying bias in this source, once again favoring Hampton in a positive light. Furthermore, the information the source provides only a very general biography of Hampton and a summary of her accomplishments which is not as effective to having a larger understanding of the impact of her achievements. Finally, three of the sources are Hampton's publications which are only cited because they are referenced in the article.

All of the facts in this article are backed up by a secondary source, however as mentioned above, not all of these secondary sources can be considered as reliable. Furthermore, not all of the sources listed are very comprehensive sources and are simply short biographies of Hampton's role at Johns Hopkins Hospital and the literature that she published which provided the structure for reform of Nursing Programs at Johns Hopkins. There are very few sources with information covering her personal life, education, etc. As mentioned previously, all of the sources are current as they were published between 2008 and 2015.

Organization

 * Guiding questions


 * Is the article well-written - i.e. Is it concise, clear, and easy to read?
 * Does the article have any grammatical or spelling errors?
 * Is the article well-organized - i.e. broken down into sections that reflect the major points of the topic?

Organization evaluation
I believe that this article is not as organized as it could have been. While all of the information in the article pertains to Isabel Hampton and her career, I feel as though there need to be more sections describing her impact towards Johns Hopkins Nursing. In the lead section of the article, Hampton's impact in categorized into three different topics: her role as the superintendent of Nursing at Johns Hopkins, the literature that she published for reforming nursing education and the different nursing organizations that she pioneered or was a member of. I strongly believe that article would be more coherent if these three topics mentioned previously were organized under a section titled Career and Social Impact. While the information might not be presented in chronological order, this form of organization will make improve readers understanding of her social impact as it is presented separately from her personal life, rather than those being presented together in a way that they seem the same. Aside from the minor organizational suggestion, I feel that the article is easy to read as all sentences are gramatically correct and simplistic. There are no distracting spelling errors in any part of the text.

Images and Media

 * Guiding questions


 * Does the article include images that enhance understanding of the topic?
 * Are images well-captioned?
 * Do all images adhere to Wikipedia's copyright regulations?
 * Are the images laid out in a visually appealing way?

Images and media evaluation
There are two images in this article. One of the images is a portrait Isabel Hampton. It has the following caption "This is the portrait that will be visible as soon as the Isabel Hampton Robb Wiki article is opened." Clearly this caption is not effective and seems to be an error made on the part of the writer. The write who included this image forgot to remove this edit that they had made prior to publishing this change. This "caption" can be replaced by a more effective caption such as "Portrait of Isabel Hampton Robb from ANA Hall of Fame." The second image in this article is of Hampton's novel Nursing: Its Principles and Practice. This caption is quite helpful in that it presents describes the significance of this novel to the field of Nursing and its importance in the hospital system. It also demonstrates why this piece of literature is one of Hampton's most significant achievements. All of the images adhere to Wikipedia's copyright regulations and have its source cited beneath the image. Additionally, these images are laid out very effectively in that they are placed near the specific line of text which refers to the image. They are not very large that they distract from the text yet they are not so small that they do not provide any significant context.

Checking the talk page

 * Guiding questions


 * What kinds of conversations, if any, are going on behind the scenes about how to represent this topic?
 * How is the article rated? Is it a part of any WikiProjects?
 * How does the way Wikipedia discusses this topic differ from the way we've talked about it in class?

Talk page evaluation
This article is rated as a C-Class Biography article and a C-Class Women writers article. It is also considered a low-importance article. Additionally, this article is a part of several WikiProjects including Biography Articles, Women Articles, Women writers article, and Chicago articles. In regards to the talk page for this article, most of the comments were posted in 2015 as Peer Reviews for the Johns Hopkins in Medicine course. The talk page has not been active since. The main criticism of the article posted in the talk page was that the there was several areas of content gaps in terms of the significance or the outcomes of the work which Hampton conducted to progress nursing as a career and as an area of study. There were also some comments regarding the organization of the article. For example, many individuals on the talk page suggested that the article should combine the sections Awards and Legacies and Works as they all pertain to successes throughout her career.

Overall impressions

 * Guiding questions


 * What is the article's overall status?
 * What are the article's strengths?
 * How can the article be improved?
 * How would you assess the article's completeness - i.e. Is the article well-developed? Is it underdeveloped or poorly developed?

Overall evaluation
Given my analysis above, I believe that this article strengths include its references. While all might be have some underlying bias, they are all secondary sources and are equally cited throughout the course of this article. The writer of this article effectively extracts all of the relevant information from each of the sources in his Reference list without simply paraphrasing each of the sources. Despite these strengths, I strongly believe that the organization can be improved such that the information about her career and impact on Johns Hopkins Nursing are organized into the following categories which are outlined in the lead of the article. Finally, I would say that the article is underdeveloped. As mentioned several times in my analyses above, the article includes a plethora of facts about Hampton's contribution to nursing and the literature that she published, however it does not explain the true significance and outcomes of her improvements.

Optional activity

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