Producing effective abstracts

Part 4: Chapter 15

Questions to consider

A. What are some ways readers “use” research abstracts?

B. What benefits will writers receive from producing a strong abstract?

In many academic and professional settings, there is a disproportionate amount of reading to be done relative to how much time people can dedicate to reading. This puts pressure on abstracts to appeal to readers both in terms of content and quality of writing.

As the “first impression” of a longer article or presentation, abstracts must convey the broad ideas and relevant details within the confines of a sometimes restrictive word-count limit. They are the basis on which many readers will decide to “download” or not. Unlike basic summaries, which accurately represent a longer body of work, abstracts focus on the contributions the article authors are making in their field of study or on their topic. This is an important distinction.

 

Language in Action

  1. Consider the abstract that follows from Writing abstracts in the university context: combining genre-based and process-oriented approaches. How long is it (in terms of approximate word count)?
  2. What information corresponds to the typical sections of a research article (introduction, methods, results, discussion)?
  3. What material qualifies as “contributions” to the field of study or topic investigation?

1Abstracts play an essential role in the academic field since they are the first section of a research article readers have at their disposal to determine its relevancy. 2Their main goal is to give a concise view of the articles that accompany them. 3Grounded on recent theoretical studies, this paper discusses the principles of a pedagogical learning cycle that can assist students in the development of their academic writing literacies in English. 4This cycle combines two methodologies traditionally used to develop writing literacies, the process-oriented approach and the genre-based one. 5Additionally, it presents classroom practices developed for the university context regarding the teaching of the academic genre “abstract” to undergraduates taking English at a Faculty of Letters in a public university of Minas Gerais. 6The participants were freshmen who were taking English One, in their first term in the context of higher education. 7The classes took place in September of 2017 and ran for one third of a sixty-hour mandatory course. 8They were aimed at discussing the stages of the learning cycle to help students’ understanding of how to write abstracts in English. 9The learning activities are thoroughly explained to demonstrate how the stages can be pedagogically applied to teaching practices. 10A brief analysis of one of the abstracts written by a participating group is given to show that the learning cycle can work well in assisting university students to adequately write abstracts. 11In a world where English is the major means of sharing scientific knowledge among members of academia, this writing pedagogy may be useful to learners in the process of composing abstracts in English as well as to professors teaching writing in the university context.[1]

Opening an abstract

The condensed nature of the abstract can create an abruptness in the style; it is not a context where beautiful language is the standard or focus. Nevertheless, strong writing delivered through accurate grammar, precise word choice and compelling content combine to develop in potential readers an interest in the larger work.

Research articles commonly open with a generalization that introduces both topic and relevance, or with statements concerning the goals or actions of the researcher or research team.

Exercise #1

Evaluate the opening sentences below. Determine the topic and relevance and whether they focus on a generalization or researcher goals or actions.

  1. Abstracts play an essential role in the academic field since they are the first section of a research article readers have at their disposal to determine its relevancy.[2]
  2. Graduate students’ failure to graduate is of great concern, with the failure to graduate due to the dissertation being the most influential factor.[3]
  3. Procrastination is a common problem in higher education.[4]
  4. The purpose of this phenomenological inquiry was to examine persistence factors associated with the successful completion of a doctoral degree in the field of education.[5]
  5. Writing successful academic conference abstracts is essential for PhD students to enable them to access world-class conferences for the presentation of their research.[6]
  6. This paper reports the findings of an Australian qualitative study (N = 45) concerned with the way that employers, academics and students perceived connections between international experience and graduate employability.[7]
  7. This study reports on the effect of a newly developed 4-week strengths-based training approach to overcome academic procrastination, given to first-year elementary teacher education students (N = 54).[8]
  8. The scientific and educational community is becoming increasingly aware of the impact of current academic working conditions on graduate students’ mental health and how this is affecting scientific progress and ultimately society as a whole.[9]
  9. This study examines whether paternal part-time employment is related to greater involvement by fathers in child care and housework, both while fathers are working part-time and after they return to full-time employment.[10]
  10. Recently, many Italian universities began offering graduate courses or entire programs in English to attract international students, assist domestic students with English language proficiency, and internationalize the learning experience for all.[11]

Abstract form: unstructured versus structured

A structured abstract offers readers explicitly labeled information from the longer work. There are generally headings related to the parts of the research paper: introduction, methods, results, and discussion.

Example: A structured abstract of Paternal Part‐Time Employment and Fathers’ Long‐Term Involvement in Child Care and Housework.

Abstract

Objective

This study examines whether paternal part-time employment is related to greater involvement by fathers in child care and housework, both while fathers are working part-time and after they return to full-time employment.

Background

The study draws on four strands of theory—time availability, bargaining, gender ideology, and gender construction. It studies couples’ division of labor in Germany, where policies increasingly support a dual-earner, dual-carer model.

Method

The study uses data from the German Socio-Economic Panel from 1991 to 2015 on employed adult fathers living together with at least one child younger than age 17 and the mother. The analytic sample comprises 51,230 observations on 8,915 fathers. Fixed effects regression techniques are used to estimate the effect of (previous) part-time employment on fathers’ child-care hours, housework hours, and share of child care and housework.

Results

Fathers did more child care and housework while they worked part time. Yet, most fathers reverted to previous levels of involvement after returning to full-time work. The only exception was fathers with partners in full-time employment, who spent more time doing child care and took on a greater share of housework after part-time employment than before.

Conclusion

The findings are largely consistent with the time availability perspective, although the results for fathers with full-time employed partners indicate that the relative resources and gender ideology perspectives have some explanatory power as well.[12]

While this format is becoming more common, trends change continuously and writers are always advised to follow the style of their department, or the organization or journal to which they are proposing. The argument that structured abstracts are of a higher quality has also not been broadly substantiated.

Exercise #2

  1. Paraphrase and rewrite the abstract from the “Language in action” box; create an original structured abstract. Consider whether a generalization or a researcher action/objective opening works best.
  2. Paraphrase and rewrite the abstract from the “example” box; create an original unstructured abstract. Consider whether a generalization or a researcher action/objective opening works best.

Abstract content: summary versus results

Beyond the opening and format of an abstract, writers proceed variously depending on the contents and overall results of their longer work. Research that presents strong results is typically represented by an abstract that highlights this. Many valuable and interesting papers cannot assert such a claim; the abstracts of those papers summarize of the work without that focus on results.

Exercise #3

  1. Look at the abstract below of A Study of Graduate Students’ Achievement Motivation, Active Learning, and Active Confidence Based on Relevant Research. It is a more general summary? or does it focus on results?

1Graduate students’ failure to graduate is of great concern, with the failure to graduate due to the dissertation being the most influential factor. 2However, there are many factors that influence the writing of a dissertation, and research on these factors that influence graduate students’ learning through emotion and cognition is still quite rare. 3A review of past research revealed that the main factor causing graduate students to drop out midway is not completing their thesis, followed by factors including insufficient  achievement motivation, lack of learning strategy, and low confidence. 4The graduation rate of graduate students has been emphasized by the academic community; therefore, this study investigated the correlation between graduate students’ achievement motivation, active learning, and academic confidence in writing research. 5The study invited graduated students from two universities of science and technology situated in the northern region of Taiwan to complete the questionnaire.  6In this study, valid data for validation analysis were collected from 173 respondents, and the results showed that achievement motivation positively influenced active learning (higher-order learning, integrative learning, reflective learning) and that active learning (higher-order learning, integrative learning, reflective learning) positively influenced academic confidence. 7From the above findings, it can be seen that to help graduate students from University of Science and Technology to effectively complete their graduate studies, students should develop good motivation to adopt active learning strategies to enhance their academic self-confidence.[13]

2. Look at the abstract of University Teaching in Global Times: Perspectives of Italian University Faculty on Teaching International Graduate Students below. It is a more general summary? or does it focus on results?

1Recently, many Italian universities began offering graduate courses or entire programs in English to attract international students, assist domestic students with English language proficiency, and internationalize the learning experience for all. 2This research investigated Italian faculty’s perspectives on their experiences of teaching international graduate students. 3The article begins with an overview of European university internationalization and then reviews the literature on faculty perspectives on teaching international students and instructional professional development for internationalization of teaching and learning. 4Findings include participant demographics and faculty perspectives on teaching international graduate students as compared with domestic students, their current and desired ways of learning how to teach international students, and their recommendations for faculty teaching in international programs/courses with English as the language of instruction. 5Implications for instructional professional development, communities of instructional practice, and further research are offered.[14]

Word count

Writers obviously must adhere to the word count limits imposed on abstracts submitted to departments for approval and to organizations and publications for acceptance. When the maximum is 150 words, 151 is too many. Editing down is a challenge and sometimes a fine art; it can result in more economical writing, which is valued when time constraints are a factor for the reader.

Exercise #4

[15]

Review and Reinforce

Research writers who read for style and the conventions of their field in addition to content will more fluently absorb and emulate those features. Deliberately writing multiple versions (structured and un-, a general summary and one that is results-based) will develop flexible and efficient skills and produce more varieties from which to build the strongest final abstract.

Media Attributions

  1. Dias, R. (2020). Writing abstracts in the university context: combining genre-based and process-oriented approaches. Trabalhos em Linguística Aplicada, 59, 240-263. ↵
  2. Dias, R. (2020). Writing abstracts in the university context: combining genre-based and process-oriented approaches. Trabalhos em Linguística Aplicada, 59, 240-263. ↵
  3. Chang, J.-C., Wu, Y.-T., & Ye, J.-N. (2022). A Study of Graduate Students’ Achievement Motivation, Active Learning, and Active Confidence Based on Relevant Research. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, 915770–915770. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.915770 ↵
  4. Patria, B., & Laili, L. (2021). Writing group program reduces academic procrastination: a quasi-experimental study. BMC psychology, 9, 1-7. ↵
  5. Spaulding, L. S., & Rockinson-Szapkiw, A. (2012). Hearing their Voices: Factors Doctoral Candidates Attribute to their Persistence. International Journal of Doctoral Studies, 7, 199-219. https://doi.org/10.28945/1589 ↵
  6. Ioratim-Uba, G. (2020). The impact of an instruction to improve L2 learners’ academic conference abstract writing in multidisciplinary programmes. Language Learning in Higher Education, 10(1), 143-169. ↵
  7. Crossman, J., & Clarke, M. (2010). International experience and graduate employability: stakeholder perceptions on the connection. Higher Education (00181560), 59(5), 599–613. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-009-9268-z ↵
  8. Visser, L., Schoonenboom, J., & Korthagen, F. A. (2017). A field experimental design of a strengths-based training to overcome academic procrastination: short-and long-term effect. Frontiers in psychology, 8, 1949. ↵
  9. Gallea, J. I., Medrano, L. A., & Morera, L. P. (2021). Work-related mental health issues in graduate student population. Frontiers in neuroscience, 15, 593562. ↵
  10. Bünning, M. (2020). Paternal Part‐Time Employment and Fathers' Long‐Term Involvement in Child Care and Housework. Journal of Marriage and Family, 82(2), 566-586. ↵
  11. Coryell, J. E., Cinque, M., Fedeli, M., Lapina Salazar, A., & Tino, C. (2022). University Teaching in Global Times: Perspectives of Italian University Faculty on Teaching International Graduate Students. Journal of Studies in International Education, 26(3), 369–389. https://doi.org/10.1177/1028315321990749 ↵
  12. Bünning, M. (2020). Paternal Part‐Time Employment and Fathers' Long‐Term Involvement in Child Care and Housework. Journal of Marriage and Family, 82(2), 566-586. ↵
  13. Chang, J.-C., Wu, Y.-T., & Ye, J.-N. (2022). A Study of Graduate Students’ Achievement Motivation, Active Learning, and Active Confidence Based on Relevant Research. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, 915770–915770. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.915770 ↵
  14. Coryell, J. E., Cinque, M., Fedeli, M., Lapina Salazar, A., & Tino, C. (2022). University Teaching in Global Times: Perspectives of Italian University Faculty on Teaching International Graduate Students. Journal of Studies in International Education, 26(3), 369–389. https://doi.org/10.1177/1028315321990749 ↵
  15. Dias, R. (2020). Writing abstracts in the university context: combining genre-based and process-oriented approaches. Trabalhos em Linguística Aplicada, 59, 240-263. ↵

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Sourcing, summarizing, and synthesizing:  Skills for effective research writing  Copyright © 2023 by Wendy L. McBride is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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