User:Benjamin.aviles1/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Social work

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose this article because it relates to my major, Criminal Justice. More specifically, I took a course last semester on Prison Reentry that involved social work. These social workers helped returning citizens transition back into a free society. This topic matters because people need guidance when it comes to being in this tough situation especially if they do not have supportive family members or friends to rely on. Without the help of social workers, individuals may re-offend and create a vicious cycle of coming in and out of the Criminal Justice System. My initial reaction to this article was that I was impressed by the extensive information provided. Also, I liked how each country has a different story as to how social work was created along with the evolving characteristics a social worker has in order to do this job effectively.

Evaluate the article
(Compose a detailed evaluation of the article here, considering each of the key aspects listed above. Consider the guiding questions, and check out the examples of what a useful Wikipedia article evaluation looks like.)

In this article titled "Social work", it talks about this profession and who it is geared to help. A precise definition of social work is provided along with the history of this profession in different countries, what the job entails, credentials required, and how the emergence of technology relates to social work in the present day. The need for this type of Profession came about when individuals were struggling to make basic ends meet and the ultimate goal was to make people more equal with opportunity. The United States, India, and Canada all had different ways social work was created, but the common problem was that people suffered with mental health. Social work includes numerous different subcategories that range from mental, financial and behavioral problems. This profession serves as a guidance point for individuals who genuinely need help or are less fortunate. In some instances, a license or higher degree of education is required in order to become a social worker and core values are outlined which these workers must possess. There are numerous different unions of social work that change depending on the area in which in you employed. Technology has also changed the way social work is conducted which has people asking questions about morals.

The articles content is relevant to the topic for the most part. The only content that I think is irrelevant is the last section "fictional social workers in media". The reason being is because it may lose readers interest if they do not know these characters, especially if it does not add value to what social work entails. If these characters were non-fiction I believe it would be different. Providing a definition, history, what the work entails, and requirements too doing this type of work all relate to this topic of social work. These is all information a reader would be interested in reading about when it comes to social work. The article is also up to date. If you look at the references list at the end of the article, most of the sources are from the 2000's. This article also includes up to date information about the effect of technology in social work. If this was an outdated article, technology would not be mentioned because it was not around in the past. One topic that could be mentioned more in this article is equity gaps. For example, providing information about which minority groups, or neighborhoods, areas, states or countries need social workers more would give readers a better understanding of which populations are being underrepresented and need more resources.

There are no biases in this article. The information presented is strictly informative which provides readers the most accurate information possible. As mentioned before, one viewpoint that is underrepresented is which ethnic groups may need social work guidance more. If there is a clear problem and pattern, providing this group with more opportunity may limit the need for social work. It would be helpful if this article could identify these less fortunate groups/areas. This article does not try to persuade the reader into thinking one thing or another. Instead, this article provides informative information about the occupation of social work, how it got created and the type of people that work in this occupation. In other words, the author keeps his emotions out of his writing in order to provide a clear understanding of this type of work.

This article provides an extensive list of sources. References, furthering reading and external links are all provided in order to let readers know exactly where the information is coming from. The sources also outline everything mentioned in the article. For example, external links break down each category along with the links. The sources are recent which helps in providing the most updated version of information for this occupation. Historically marginalized groups are not included. However, the article identifies who needs social work the most in the "Transtheoretical Model". This does not include racial groups. Instead of the websites that are not peer- reviewed, one improvement that could be made is going on University at Albany library database and using peer reviewed articles there or Google Scholar. The links that I have clicked on all work.

This article is very well written and is easy for readers to understand and pick apart information. The table of contents provided helps readers easily navigate through each section and get an overall understanding of what the article is about. Each category in the table of contents is relevant when you are truly trying to comprehend this occupation. It is also easy to read because terms that readers may not be familiar with such as "philanthropy" have a definition to it. All you have to do is click on the word if it is blue and underlined or just put your clicker over the word and a definition is provided. The article has correct spelling.

There are very few images provided in this article. More images would help readers better understand this topic because some individuals learn better from a visual standpoint. Pictures of social workers physically doing their occupation may be helpful here. The images captions get straight to the point- maybe it would be better to have more details in these pictures along with more updated pictures of present day social work. I also think the images could be in color to appeal to younger people who were not around during the time period of black and white. Color pictures may also help retain a better comprehension of the picture.

Individuals have come together to represent this topic by having conversations about improvements that could be made to clearly appeal to readers. Talk included what information could be left out, more real life examples, questions about how to become a social worker, potentially reorganizing sections based on relevance or deleting irrelevant sections and replacing them with more relevant ones, grammatical suggestions, and questions about if social workers need more training to account for different beliefs in order to truly bring about change. This article is part of WikiProject Social Work. It was a "good article nominee" and currently rated as C-Class.

Overall, this article is an informative article when trying to learn about social work and how to become a social worker. This article has many strengths. The sections are laid out in a comprehensive order so that you can read about each topic separately without information being all over the place. Most of the information provided is relevant so that the reader is not wasting their time reading information that does not contribute to their learning of the topic. One way the article can be improved is by adding some personal anecdotes of individuals who are social workers. This would help readers engage with the information on a personal level instead of just being fed information in a formal way, sometimes a mixture is needed. This article is well- developed. Each section gets right to the point. I believe it has a good balance of providing extensive information and keeping it precise so that readers are not bored or disengaged.