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Fields of study has some wonky options

Open gsidebo opened this issue 8 years ago • 3 comments

Our options for fields of study came from here: https://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/cipcode/resources.aspx?y=55 (CIPCode 2010.xls link). They can be viewed directly on the website by navigating here (https://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/cipcode/browse.aspx?y=55) and clicking "Expand All". We took the 'leaves' of this hierarchy to populate our field of study options.

As a result, we're presenting some options that don't make a lot of sense text-wise. Some examples:

  • "Agricultural Public Services, Other" is an option, but there is no option for "Agricultural Public Services". There are a ton of these.
  • "Pharmacology and Toxicology" and "Pharmacology and Toxicology, Other" are option, but there is no other categorization of "Pharmacology and Toxicology".
  • "Statistics, General" and "Statistics, Other" are options with no additional categorization for "Statistics". This one might make sense, but it may be worth looking into other options that follow a similar pattern.
  • A few options with double spaces like "American History (United States)" and "Health/Medical Physics"

There are also options which describe specific occupations, not a field of study at a educational establishment, eg:

  • "Lactation Consultant"
  • "Health Unit Manager/Ward Supervisor"

We should comb the options and to clean these names and remove duplicates. The fact that these categories come directly from nces.ed.gov doesn't make the experience any less confusing or potentially misleading for the user. I'm not sure what to do about the occupation options

gsidebo avatar Jun 24 '16 19:06 gsidebo

Suggested edits:

  1. For anything option that ends with ", Other", if there is no other categorization, just remove the ", Other" from the text
  2. If there are two matching options, one that ends with ", Other" and one with nothing on the end, and there is no other categorization elsewhere, remove the options that ends with ", Other"
  3. Remove double spaces anywhere they occur

gsidebo avatar Jun 27 '16 14:06 gsidebo

@roberthouse54 I'd be interested in your thoughts on this, esp priority.

I'm inclined to make the changes above, but not a high priority.

Also, fwiw, you can get credentialed as a lactation consultant. Not likely that you would use that as a stepping stone into supply chain management, but who are we to judge?

pdpinch avatar Jun 27 '16 14:06 pdpinch

@pdpinch i was just pointing out that the titles are indicate an occupation rather than a field ('lactation consultant' rather than 'lactation consulting'). makes me wonder about the purpose of this list and if it matches our own

gsidebo avatar Jun 27 '16 19:06 gsidebo