User talk:Nicolelikestolearn

Welcome!
Hello, Nicolelikestolearn, and welcome to Wikipedia! My name is Shalor and I work with the Wiki Education Foundation; I help support students who are editing as part of a class assignment.

I hope you enjoy editing here. If you haven't already done so, please check out the student training library, which introduces you to editing and Wikipedia's core principles. You may also want to check out the Teahouse, a community of Wikipedia editors dedicated to helping new users. Below are some resources to help you get started editing. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me on my talk page. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:25, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

Notes on Health care in the United States
Hi! I noticed that you were editing the article on health care in the United States. Since this is a medical topic, I would like for you to take this training, which will help you with sourcing. In general be very careful with the sourcing you use and how you use it. For example, one of the statistics you add was that the life expectancy has dropped for the first time since 1993 - however the article itself doesn't specify the year 1993. It states that the last multi-year drop was in 1962 and 1963, which is a different claim entirely. Be very careful about this.

Also be cautious when it comes to citing studies. The reason for this is that studies are considered primary sources for the claims and data presented in their research, so you will need to have an independent, secondary source that either reproduces or reflects on the data. That the research was done through a prestigious university and published doesn't really meet this need, as these outlets just review the study to ensure that it's legit and has no overwhelming errors. Another thing with studies is that the secondary coverage also helps show why a specific study is notable enough to be highlighted and included over other, similar studies. In this situation you used a report published in the Harvard Gazette, so this would still be seen as a primary source. Since the study was done with so many notable institutions, it's likely that sourcing is out there. I'd recommend looking at the study in the Web of Science database, as the WoS will show you who has referenced that study in their work and you can follow the trail from there.

Thirdly, be careful to be neutral - especially when it comes to politics and healthcare. Make sure that you're using the best possible sourcing and that you aren't trying to argue from a specific viewpoint. The reason I mention this is because you added some info about Obama and Trump. With things like this, it's always best to read the talk page first to see if it was mentioned before and to try and find the best possible sourcing.

Other than that, my only other note would be that if the content is removed, you should bring up the removal on the article or removing editor's talk page. This is because this particular entry is one that is fairly controversial and as such, has been very frequently edited. If you make further edits to the page I'd recommend making small edits so that it's easier for people to see what you're doing and if they see something that needs to be fixed or removed, it's easier for them to do this.

I hope that none of this scares you off - it's not meant to, it's just that this article touches many different topic areas. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:39, 28 February 2018 (UTC)