Journal article with brief comments (Poston 1986) - Global Health

“Patterns of Contraceptive Use in China” Poston, Dudley L. Jr. 1986. Studies in Family Planning 17:5 pg. 217-227. Comments by Wing Yu Tang, major Biological Sciences

While "Patterns of Contraceptive Use in China" (pdf) (link NU only) is very prose-like, there are many aspects of it that are good. Essentially, the selection (1) shows what an article  geared towards a general audience looks like and (2) has great figures and table citations. This article is also unusual in terms of formatting. I think this type of style (as the paper notes at the end) is great in terms of a transcript that you might use perhaps to accompany a presentation. It can  be seen as a literature review—that is gathering from sources (first- and second-hand) on the topic and fusing all their results in a single paper. For many, this is a much easier and comprehensive way to study a subject matter than reading 30 very specific papers to get an idea about a topic. Having such a broad overview, however, does little in terms of supplying solid specifics—for many this is a good stepping stone to find better, more tailored articles. Articles like these, as I have already mentioned, provide much more visual demonstration and dialogue. This style is especially good for reports or classes that involve an preliminary literature review.