User talk:Reuben Glasser

Welcome!
Hello, Reuben Glasser, 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) 19:55, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

Studies as sources
Hi, I saw that you used studies as sources for your addition to the article on race and crime in the United States.

Studies are often problematic as sources because they're seen as primary sources for any of the research and claims that they put forth. As such, an independent, secondary source is needed to validate the study's findings, help provide context, and also show where the study is notable enough to highlight in the article. With validation, the publication that is printing the study doesn't actually verify the study itself as they only look to make sure that there are no glaring errors that would immediately invalidate the study. Studies are also fairly limited in scope out of necessity - they can't survey every person, so they have to take a limited selection of participants. This means that the study's findings are really only accurate for that specific group of people or news articles. The researcher can say that the study is representative of a larger group, but a secondary source is needed to really help back that up. This secondary source can not only help validate the claims but also give the much needed context by way of commentary on the topic. As far as notability goes, the reason this is needed is because we need to show where the study has been covered by others since this will help show why this study should be chosen to highlight in the article, especially over other, similar studies, some of which may have an opposing viewpoint.

I hope this helps! Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 14:10, 1 April 2019 (UTC)