Feedback Unit 3

Hi Erica, the following is my feedback to you and Paige for unit 3. Thank you for giving us some good info on an interesting and important topic for any age group.
Pete Hite

Feedback Unit 3

This week I chose to review the unit 3 contribution on the early childhood life-stage. The authors, Erica Porras and Paige Schwarz, wrote about the five elements covered in unit 3: risk factors, protective factors, dietary and fitness guidelines, and the implications of the interplay between food and body. The early childhood life-stage discusses girls from birth to age 6. All of the elements were well organized and clearly titled. 

The authors introduce the idea of Eating Disorders in Children with an interesting and informative video. I thought this video appropriately addressed the issue at hand, though it didn’t specifically talk about children from birth to age 6.  The video did well to introduce some of the challenges of recognition and diagnosis of eating disorders in children, including the difficulties that children may face in accurately expressing what they are feeling and/or experiencing. The second sentence of the paragraph that introduced the video looked like it had some extra spaces between some of the words. The paragraph was otherwise well written and did a good job of introducing the video. The quote used immediately after the video was great, it tied the topic to the age group and set up discussion on the risk factors that influence the development of ED. 

The Risk Factors section, though full of useful information and presented in a clear and straightforward manner, did not seem to provide specific details on the factors that contribute to the development of eating disorders relative to the target age group. The section on protective factors was very similar to the risk factors in that it was very informative, well organized and well written. It was also similar in that it lacked a specific association to the age group, though the factors were written in a manner that could generally apply to the life-stage. 

The section on dietary guidelines was the strongest of the page. The infographics used were appropriate and very informative. This age group covers a wide range of dietary needs and the authors did a good job of presenting this info. The text box titled “Notes” partially obscured the text in the paragraph below it, but that is easily remedied. The next section on the webpage sets out to cover activity guidelines for early childhood. The authors were presented with the challenge of little to no information to present. They did a good job of describing this challenge and supporting it with strong references. The last topic, Implications of the Interplay Between Food and Body, had no content. I know that some of us ran into problems with content being lost, so I can only assume what happened here.

Overall, I thought the authors did a good job of presenting the information at hand. The info ranged from very specific to the early childhood age group (dietary guidelines) to broadly general (risk factors). The info was presented in a way that could prove useful to healthcare practitioners as well as laypeople. I hope the authors can remedy the lack of content in the “Implications” section and help the readers synthesize the information provided.