I am confused because I noticed that abstract varies from one another across many researchers. As a veteran researcher, what really the components of a thesis abstract or a dissertation abstract or any research abstract.Thanks all in advance.
Dear Dr. Craig Refugio , an abstract is a brief summary of the most important points in a scientific paper. It is a self-contained, short, and powerful statement that describes a larger work. Abstracts enable professionals to stay current with the huge volume of scientific literature.
Components vary according to discipline. An abstract of a social science or scientific work may contain the scope, purpose, results, and contents of the work. An abstract of a humanities work may contain the thesis, background, and conclusion of the larger work. An abstract is not a review, nor does it evaluate the work being abstracted.
For your further readings, please have a look into the follwoing documents. I hope they will help you much in developing a sound abstract.
"An abstract is a concise summary of a research paper or entire thesis. It is an original work, not an excerpted passage. An abstract must be fully self-contained and make sense by itself, without further reference to outside sources or to the actual paper. It highlights key content areas, your research purpose, the relevance or importance of your work, and the main outcomes. It is a well-developed single paragraph of approximately 250 words in length, which is indented and single spaced. The function of the abstract is to outline briefly all parts of the paper. Although it is placed at the beginning of your paper, immediately following the title page, the abstract should be the last thing that you write, once you are sure of the conclusions you will reach" (Academic Skills)
abstract is description for thesis or research must be short paragraph content: An overview of the research or thesis and then the purpose of research and then the methodology of research and available results.
Abstract is a summary of a research work in which each of its component must be briefly. The contents of an abstract are extracted from the main research work. The components of the abstract in order are 1) Introduction 2) Statement of problem 4) Justification (optional) 3) Aim / Objective of the study 4) Methodology 5) Results 6) briefly Discussion 6) Conclusion. In all abstract could contains 250 to 450 words.
Excellent question. Though university standards vary, it is a short description of what your study is about to include your methodology and design used, problem statement, results and keywords. Information should be such that it is powerful enough to grab the attention of the reader. One thing that I noticed while working on my dissertation was I gravitated to studies that were listed instead of written in paragraph form.
For example the researcher wrote a short synopsis and then listed items like this
Methodology:
Design:
Results:
Pay attention to what you have to include, how many words, the font you are to use and line spacing.
Usually it is divided into five parts: context, objective, method, results, conclusion. In context one can speak of the research challenges. Generally uses 250 words for articles, in thesis can change according to the institution.
Abstract is a brief summary of a research article, thesis and always appears at the beginning of a manuscript or typescript, acting as the point-of-entry for any given academic paper ,the abstract can convey the main results and conclusions of a scientific article but the full text article must be consulted for details of the methodology, the full experimental results, and a critical discussion of the interpretations and conclusions.
Many good points have been made so far by the earlier authors above. I would add two things to take into account.
First, if the document the abstract is prepared for has a partial judicial meaning - patents would be an example of such documents. Patent claims used to be drawn with a help of a licensed patent attorney, and usually have one or just several independent claims. An abstract ought to outline the key ideas of those independent claims, while keeping the abstract concise and clear.
Second, due to automated information system processing in abstract texts searches for key words - it is highly recommended that the entire document /article / patent key words are in a mutually compliant agreement with ones used in the abstracts. Otherwise, searches will produce numerous false negative or false positive search errors complicating the document identification and its entire future and potential.
Agree with all colleagues, however, in research papers, abstract must hide something, generally results, to attract the reader to read the whole paper, not only the abstract and understand the message from it.
Hence, the abstract of a research paper may include:
- a glance at background.
- very quick look at the research aim.
- the methodology used.
- and the conclusion in some words .
Meanwhile, a summary must include everything, but summarized.
Abstract of Ph D Thesis need to capture essence of whole research work.
It need to highlight in brief the problem, methodology followed, tools/techniques applied, conceptual framework, validation through real life cases, results achieved, inferences drawn.
The abstract of Ph D thesis may be one to two pages.
"An Abstract is a short document that is intended to capture the interest of a potential reader of your paper. Thus in a sense it is a marketing document for your full paper. If the Abstract is poorly written or if it is boring then it will not encourage a potential reader to spend the time reading your work.
Thus the first rule of Abstract writing is that it should engage the reader by telling him or her what your paper is about and why they should read it. Although strictly not part of your Abstract, the title of the proposed paper is also important. Short attention-catching titles are the most effective. However, it is also important, for a conference paper, to ensure that the title describes the subject you are writing about. You should limit the length of the title to no more than 12 words.
With regards the body of the Abstract you need to make a clear statement of the topic of your paper and your research question. You need to say how your research was/is being undertaken. For example, is it empirical or theoretical? Is it quantitative or qualitative? Perhaps it follows the critical research method. What value are your findings and to whom will they be of use?
The Abstract should then briefly describe the work to be discussed in your paper and also give a concise summary of the findings. Finally your Abstract should not include diagrams and in general references are not required in the Abstract.
The marketing of your proposed paper needs to be done within the word limit of 300 - 350 words..."
What must be the exact components of an abstract of a thesis, dissertation or any research paper?
Think there is no fixed / exact components of an abstract as the abstract is dependent on factors like number of words restriction, types of document (e.g. theses, research or project paper etc.), format required by certain journals / publishing houses like Emerald etc. If there is no word restriction, think Emerald format will be good as it covers most of the components needed in an abstract i.e. 1) Purpose, 2) Design / methodology / approach, 3) Findings, 4) Research limitations / implications, 5) Practical implication & 6) Originality / value. However, due to word count restriction, you might want to summarize from the above format & only providing the salient points that can attract readers to read on.
Thanks for asking this question. abstract is a summary put at the beginning of your thesis to tell readers of your work about it and have information before entering the entire document. masters thesis must have 150 words and doctoral thesis 350 words as some universities recommend . it contains the following parts: sentenced two or three summarizing introduction, few sentences summarizing literature review, summary of Methodology, objective, results and conclusion. all are done in a very summarized way.
Good contribution from colleagues. The abstract should include the rationale for carrying out the work, objectives, main methods and results of the study . Then researchers mention the main conclusions and what the study adds.
A brief background of the work, previous work, rationale of the work, problem statement, aim and objectives, research methods, analysis tool, finds and conclusion/recommendation
Abstrac is abrief summary of the most important findings of a scientific research including methodology,results,discussion,conclusion&recommendation in a powerful statements that enables the reader to understand with a clearer image.
The readability of the abstracts, i.e. the level of education that is required to understand them, can be one of many pieces of information from which to systematically classify and analyze academic discourses and their development. While text readability, scientific impact and emerging technologies have received ample attention from the scientific community, little context has been established between these three factors. It would be particularly valuable to see whether any fundamental cross-technology similarities over time can be observed...
An abstract of a research work has to contain a brief summary of the following
1. Background , 2. Aims or objectives , 3. Methodology , 4. Results that show the most important findings or outcomes 5. Discussions, 6.Conclusions and recommendations all in a simple clear and readable scientific manner.
Specific writing style is important component of abstract of article or conference paper. Such as APA Style , Vancover Style , MLA Style likewise. Mostly for wring thesis APA style is recommended . In APA all the references with author name and year will appear in each citation. It is good see which year the article published and reference list will come according to alphabetical. APA - format of Abstract will come IMRAD format . It is Introduction , Materials and Methods , Result and Discussion. In Vancover style the citation will come 1,2, 3 like numerical order accordingly arranged reference list .I hope this may be the relevant answer for your question.