User:Sew1029/Evaluate an Article

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


 * Name of article: Generalized anxiety disorder
 * I chose this article to evaluate because I am interested in anxiety itself and how it really effects people. It stuck out to me out of a lot of them on the list that was given.

Lead

 * Guiding questions

Lead evaluation
Overall, the lead introductory sentence of the article clearly describes the article's topic about Generalized Anxiety Disorder. The lead includes a brief description of the article's major sections including risk factors, pathophysiology, diagnosis, prevention, treatment, comorbidity, history, and epidemiology. It includes extra information about symptoms and interferences that are not listed in the major sections part of the article. The lead does a very good job at introducing the topic but I believe it is slightly over detailed and will be repetitive in some of the major sections.

Content

 * Guiding questions

Content evaluation
The articles content is relevant to the topic overall. It talks all about risk factors, diagnosis, treatments, preventions, and history about the disorder. The majority of the content is from the past ten years so it is pretty up to date. For the most part, all the content that is there seems like it should be there and I don't think there is any content missing. The article does talk about Generalized Anxiety Disorder in terms of how some people of certain countries, race, and ages are more likely to develop the disorder. For example, it states "GAD is seen in women twice as much as men."

Tone and Balance

 * Guiding questions

Tone and balance evaluation
The article is written slightly biased in the way that if you do certain things in your life, such as drink an excessive amount of caffeine, you may be more likely to develop GAD. There are not any major claims that appear heavily biased toward a particular position, the article is just stating scientific facts. The viewpoints do seem a bit underrepresented in that some major parts of the article could use more information, such as the genetics part under risk factors. The article does not attempt to persuade the reader in favor of one position or another, it is simply just stating facts about GAD.

Sources and References

 * Guiding questions

Sources and references evaluation
The majority of the facts in the article are backed up by a reliable secondary source of information. I did find a couple facts that indicated that a citation was needed. The sources are throughout the entire article and reflect on the available literature on the topic. The majority the sources are current, dating back to about 25 years go. The few links I clicked on did work and sent me to a reliable secondary source of information.

Organization

 * Guiding questions

Organization evaluation
The article is concise, clear, and easy to read since it is split up into sub articles. I don't notice any obvious grammatical or spelling errors in the article. The article is well-organized in the way that it is broken down into sections that reflect the major points of the topic.

Images and Media

 * Guiding questions

Images and media evaluation
There is only one image in the entire article, but it does enhance the understanding of the topic. It shows where the amygdala is in the brain and it is well-captioned because it says how it is related to the topic of GAD. The image does adhere to Wikipedia's copyright regulations and it is laid out in a visually appealing way.

Checking the talk page

 * Guiding questions

Talk page evaluation
There are a few conversations going on behind the scenes of this article. The conversions are about gender being a risk factor and how there used to be an image in the article that nobody could even read because there was so much wording on it. This article was rated as C-Class and it is apart of 4 Wikiprojects. Although we have not talked about this particular topic yet, I am sure most of the information Wikipedia discusses on this topic will line up with the information we learn in class.

Overall impressions

 * Guiding questions

Overall evaluation
Overall, I feel like it was a decent article. I think more information could have been provided and more sections could have been added to talk about how GAD affects one's life. One of articles strengths was how well the diagnosis and treatment sections were set up. It made it a lot easier to read different ways of treatments and the different types of criteria that needed to be met to be diagnosed. Although this article was written well, I believe it is slightly underdeveloped and more information could have been added.

Optional activity

 * Choose at least 1 question relevant to the article you're evaluating and leave your evaluation on the article's Talk page. Be sure to sign your feedback

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 * Link to feedback: Talk:Generalized anxiety disorder