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What Is an Abstract?

An abstract is a concise summary of the purpose or aim of your research paper, thesis, or dissertation. You’ve probably seen an abstract a time or two when looking at a scholarly journal. These examples of abstracts in APA tell you whether the piece is worth your time to read. Write the abstract at the very end, when you’ve completed the rest of the text. There are four things you need to include: Abstracts vary by type but should include:

Research questions, problems, and/or a hypothesis
Research methods
Study results and conclusions
Recommendations and implications

How to write an abstract

Get help at top grade professors in writing a coherent abstract to express the central idea of your reserach paper, thesis, or dissertation.

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When to write an abstract

You will almost always have to include an abstract when writing a thesis, dissertation, research paper, or submitting an article to an academic journal.

In all cases, the abstract is the very last thing you write. It should be a completely independent, self-contained text, not an excerpt copied from your paper or dissertation. An abstract should be fully understandable on its own to someone who hasn’t read your full paper or related sources.

An abstract is usually around 150–250 words, but there’s often a strict word limit, so make sure to check the requirements of the university or journal.

According to Carole Slade, an abstract is “a concise summary of the entire paper.”

The function of an abstract is to describe, not to evaluate or defend, the paper.
The abstract should begin with a brief but precise statement of the problem or issue, followed by a description of the research method and design, the major findings, and the conclusions reached.
The abstract should contain the most important key words referring to method and content: these facilitate access to the abstract by computer search and enable a reader to decide whether to read the entire dissertation.

Note: Your abstract should read like an overview of your paper, not a proposal for what you intended to study or accomplish.

The easiest approach to writing an abstract is to imitate the structure of the larger work—think of it as a miniature version of your dissertation or research paper. In most cases, this means the abstract should contain four key elements.

Types of Research Papers

You may be asked to prepare various kinds of research papers as a student, including:

Empirical study
Theory-oriented
Methodological
Case study

Many papers in the social sciences, natural sciences, and engineering sciences follow IMRaD structure: their main sections are entitled Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion. People use the abstract to decide whether to read the rest of the paper, so the abstract for such a paper is important.

Because the abstract provides the highlights of the paper, you should draft your abstract after you have written a full draft of the paper. Doing so, you can summarize what you’ve already written in the paper as you compose the abstract.

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Writing an Abstract for an IMRaD Paper

Introduction

Start by clearly defining the purpose of your research. What practical or theoretical problem does the research respond to, or what research question did you aim to answer?

You can include some brief context on the social or academic relevance of your topic, but don’t go into detailed background information.

After identifying the problem, state the objective of your research. Use verbs like investigate, test, analyze or evaluate to describe exactly what you set out to do.

This part of the abstract can be written in the present or past simple tense, but should never refer to the future, as the research is already complete.

Wrong.This study will investigate the relationship between coffee consumption and productivity.

Correct.This study investigates the relationship between coffee consumption and productivity.

Methodology

This is where you talk about how you conducted the study. You should include things like how many participants were involved and their characteristics; how data was collected or obtained; and any other information that will help your readers understand how the study went about its work.

N This part should be a straightforward description of what you did in one or two sentences. It is usually written in the past simple tense as it refers to completed actions.

Wrong. Structured interviews will be conducted with 25 participants.
Correct. Structured interviews were conducted with 25 participants.

Don’t evaluate validity or obstacles here—the goal is not to give an account of the methodology’s strengths and weaknesses, but to give the reader a quick insight into the overall approach and procedures you used.

Results

What are the results of the research? What did you find? The results should be presented in a sequence that makes sense to the reader. The Results should tell your readers what you discovered. It helps to follow the same format from the abstract into the full paper to make it easy for your reader to follow along.

This is also where you can talk about the limitations of the study or things that could be improved in future research. This part of the abstract can be in the present or past simple tense.

Wrong. Our analysis has shown a strong correlation between coffee consumption and productivity.
Correct. Our analysis shows a strong correlation between coffee consumption and productivity.
Correct. Our analysis showed a strong correlation between coffee consumption and productivity.

Conclusion

Finally, state the main conclusions of your research: what is your answer to the problem or question? The reader should finish with a clear understanding of the central point that your research has proved or argued. Conclusions are usually written in the present simple tense.

Wrong. We concluded that coffee consumption increases productivity.
Correct. We conclude that coffee consumption increases productivity.

If there are important limitations to your research (for example, related to your sample size or methods), you should mention them briefly in the abstract. This allows the reader to accurately assess the credibility and generalizability of your research.

If your aim was to solve a practical problem, the conclusions might include recommendations for implementation. If relevant, you can briefly make suggestions for further research.

Tips for writing an abstract

Keywords

If your paper will be published, you might have to add a list of keywords at the end of the abstract. These keywords should reference the most important elements of the research to help potential readers find your paper during their own literature searches.

Adding keywords at the end of your abstract guides online searches. These keywords need to accurately represent the paper and be specific. After the abstract paragraph, type Keywords: italicized and indented.

Summary

Typically, an abstract for an IMRaD paper or presentation is one or two paragraphs long (120 – 500 words). Abstracts usually spend

25% of their space on the purpose and importance of the research (Introduction)
25% of their space on what you did (Methods)
35% of their space on what you found (Results)
15% of their space on the implications of the research

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