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Your response to your classmates must be substantive

Sociology

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Your response to your classmates must be substantive. Share ideas, explore differences, and think critically about your classmates’ posts. Bring in information from your textbook, classroom resources or other credible sources that you find to contribute to the discussion. You are invited to share relevant audio, video, or images in your responses. You must cite and reference any sources you use, even in your responses to your classmates. 

PEER RESPONSE:

 In addition to the scholarly, peer-reviewed article Health and big data: An ethical framework for health information collection by corporate wellness programs, I also read the popular source Workplace wellness programs put employee privacy at risk, retrieved from CNN. The scholarly source targets both the corporations providing the wellness programs and the employees using the program. The target audience affects the language of the scholarly source as it shares informative material about wellness plans, their purpose, and the implications of the shared data to educate program users. It also provides options/solutions that address concerns that users and providers may experience with wellness programs. The popular source appears to be targeting the employees using the corporate-provided wellness programs. For me, the language of the popular source came across as one-sided and negative, as though the intent is to feed the fears employees may have about wellness programs. Would this source be a type of confirmation bias article that someone may read to confirm their preconception that wellness plans are just another way to gather a person's personal information and use it negatively?

The scholarly source presented many attributes that supported its credibility. The journal quoted multiple sources and listed them in the reference section. An example would be the description provided for a wellness program. The journal quoted the definition of a wellness program and included the source in the reference list. There is also a section on the credentials of the journal authors that supports the credibility of the work. The popular source was shared by CNN Health, which has credibility; however, the article itself does not have the same attributes as the scholarly source. The CNN article does not have a reference section, so I question the original context of the quotes. An example would be the quote from Scott Peppet about how data can affect other decisions. I can not find the original source to see the statement's context or to complete a proper citation. How do we know that Peppet was referring to data collected in a wellness program?

It would be appropriate to use the scholarly source for academic purposes if/when researching the impact of wellness programs on corporations and their employees. The article would be an appropriate source because it comes from credible authors, reviews the pros and cons of wellness programs, including data handling, and provides a developed model program based on research covered in the journal article. I would not have concerns about using this scholarly source for academic purposes except that it is well rounded, and a researcher may feel they can pull all necessary information from this one source and not look at other sources. The popular source Workplace wellness programs put employee privacy at risk may support a researcher early on in the research process by calling out areas of concern regarding wellness programs and the use of collected data; however, I do not consider the source to be appropriate to include for academic purposes. My concern with using this article for an academic purpose is that it lacks credibility. The information appears to be more opinion-based than fact-based.