Sample journal article with analysis(Woo et al, 2004) - Global Health

"Health needs of Hong Kong Chinese pregnant adolescents" (pdf) (link NU only) is a social science piece that uses purposive sampling and semi-structured interviews. Purposive sampling means that specific subjects are chosen, as opposed to random sampling that you might see done with a more general topic. The focus therefore is to get as many subjects as possible who are closely related and within a certain group, rather than to try to get as diverse a group as possible. A semi-structured interview is a special type of interviewing style. These interviews, as the name implies, not only use thought-out interview questions, but allow the interviewer to deviate from the script (within reason). This allows for collection of more in-depth information and prose from the interviewees. However, the questions used in this type of sampling must be selected and edited with caution—too much ambiguity does not allow one to publish a solid report with strong warrants (i.e. when answers deviate too much from subject to subject, one needs a greater sampling pool, etc.).

One of the greatest strengths of this paper is its organization. From the start, there appear short, one- to two-line summaries of each section, telling you everything you need to decide whether or not you want to read the paper. For those of you who will do literature reviews (or anything of the sort), such summaries will most certainly become your best friends in terms of helping you line up and organize the data that you find.

The introduction of this paper is worked out nicely as well: it gives the reader enough background to proceed despite his or her lack of previous knowledge. The next section is set up differently. In this article “the study” is separated into small sections. This aids in the flow and organization of the paper; however, most of the time, this part will be run together and under “methodologies.” Essentially this is where you explain the process you went through. Here is also where you address questions of reasoning and ethics.

For the findings section, the authors have chosen again to use sub-categories. They also blended the discussion with the findings, though these are often separate sections. Note, however, that sometimes such papers have to follow a certain protocol if they are published in certain magazines (to keep consistency of the formatting). Sometimes you see that the findings split into “results” and “discussion”; again it depends on many factors

This paper ends with a conclusion, but I also like that it gives the reader a little summary of what has already been known about the topic and what this paper adds. However, this is not the norm; nevertheless, this style gives the paper character and personalization for the reader to visualize what the paper did to expand the field. One question that my advisor always asked me was "How do you think this paper can contribute and expand the field?" This is another great reminder that it's important to keep up-to-date with the current literature.

Lastly, a very generic reference section at the end. This paper was a nice length—7.5 pages.