Valentina González Figueroa

Comparison of Informal and Academic Writing

Source 1: COVID Choices & Case Rate Cutoffs

Audience

The audience intended for Source 1 are parents or guardians that have to take care of children
that at the moment were unvaccinated. The concern of this audience was protecting their
household, while trying to resume normal activities with their children during the summer. This
audience might already know that vaccines provide protection for adults. They also might have
access to information about lowered COVID rates as a result of vaccination. The audience of this
source may want to know how to choose activities that they can more safely engage in. The
elements of the article that indicate that this is intended for parents or guardians is the personal
experience of the author. An additional indicator is the decision-making process referenced from
the book The Family-Firm.

Authority

The author of Source 1 is Emily Oster. She has a PhD in Economics and has focused her work on
health economics and statistical methods. The intended audience of parents and guardians will
find her work reliable, considering she has published books centered around decision making
within the household.

Scope

The scope of Source 1 is narrowed to a decision making process that parents or guardians with
unvaccinated children could apply during the summer season. However, the scope of this article
could also be viewed as broader in the sense that it could have been helpful for unvaccinated
adults that were also looking for a systematic process to assess health risk factors to decide
whether they would engage in certain activities.
Valentina González Figueroa
Comparison of Informal and Academic Writing

Source 2: A Prospective Study of Mental Health During the COVID-19 Pandemic in

Childhood Trauma-Exposed Individuals: Social Support Matters.

Audience

The intended audience of Source 2 are students and mental health professionals. Readers of the
Journal of Traumatic Stress from the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies are
interested in learning about the development of new clinical research studies. The audience of
this article already have background knowledge of psychology or psychiatry. The elements of the
article that indicate that the intended audience falls within the academic field are: the description
of the methods employed for the clinical research, as well as the statistical report and analysis of
qualitative and quantitative data -through statistical tools like Cronbach alpha’s coefficient-, and
technical vocabulary (i.e, PTSD, CTE).

Authority

The developers of the clinical research wrote the article, which implicates a direct source of the
findings. They included all the data as a base for communicating their results. As in any well
elaborated article in a scientific journal, this article makes exhaustive reference to various
authors and experts on the field of psychology and psychiatry.

Scope

The scope of this article is not only narrow, but also specialized. It focuses on the results of a
clinical study aimed to investigate mental health implications for individuals who have
experienced childhood traumatic experiences. This is a more focused topic than Source 1, as it is
specialized academic writing.