User:Lkshephe/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Applied behavior analysis

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose this article because I currently work in the field of Applied Behavior Analysis for my work as a Registered Behavioral Technician and would love to learn more and dig deeper into the subject. This article matters because the subject and practice of Applied Behavior Analysis can be used beyond the treatment of autism. It is a tool that is useful for changing behavior for the betterment of society. My preliminary impression was that it has many different sections, including criticism of ABA, which leads me to believe that it might be an unbiased article given that it includes different points of view of ABA. I also am impressed with the amount of citations that it consists of, making me think that it is research-based.

Evaluate the article
The article's lead is overall strong except for a few weak points. While it has a brief explanation for some of the major sections of the articles, it does not for all and may overrepresent the criticism of ABA for the lead while underrepresenting most of the research. Every point that it mentions in the lead is later expanded on and developed in the article. This article puts a lot of weight on the criticism of ABA for it not be its own dedicated header. However, the article does have a good balance otherwise. It goes into the many different aspects of ABA, including its history, methodologies, characteristics, concepts, and more. Certain sections lack the cohesion that the majority of the article has. As this article has been made, just reading it and seeing the format gives the impression that people with different writing and formatting styles worked on it together, making it not look cohesive. Some sections seem to be underdeveloped and lacking the substantial research that other sections have. The article seems to be heavily biased towards the criticism of ABA used as a therapy for individuals with autism, clearly withholding research that has positive results for ABA treatment. There is only one result of research included in the article that concludes that ABA treatment is helpful for individuals with autism, but as a whole, it only focuses on the research that is against it and doesn't create an unbiased and purely informative article. While the article uses a majority of peer-reviewed research articles as its references, it does have a more concentrated amount of random websites as its references for the controversial portion of the article. There is, however, an alert by Wikipedia on a certain header of the article ("Measuring behavior") warning that it needs added citations for verification. Not all of the links seem to work but most of them are set up correctly. The article is written in a way that it may be difficult for someone to read and understand if they do not have a background in ABA, and seems to have grammatical errors that will make it awkward to read. The article does not contain any images. When looking at the Talk page, it is clear that the article has had editors change the article out of passion and not research, evident by the mildly aggressive tone that some of the chats have. Some on the Talk page see the article as a "disgrace." Compared to the Talk pages we were first familiarized with, this one is a bit more hostile and led by passion.

Overall, I think the article could use some substantial improvements. However, I think its strengths are its history section and its section about the characteristics of ABA. Both of these sections are well-developed and cohesive. In terms of improvement, I think this article could focus on becoming more cohesive and focusing on having a more neutral tone when it comes to controversies. In terms of its completeness, I would say that the article is well-developed except for some particularly poorly developed sections that seem to be outliers to the article as a whole.