How to Write an Abstract

The purpose of an abstract is to serve as a link between the title of a scientific article (research study) which may be only a few words long and the full article which may be 8-10 or more pages long. The abstract is a useful summary of the article that provides justification for the research. The abstract allows the reader to conclude whether the full article is worth reading.

The abstract should outline the objectives of the research study and its rationale. The materials and methods of the study should be stated with the statistical methods used. The results of the research should be concisely stated. A brief interpretation with the supporting statistics should be provided and a conclusion briefly stated.

There are two main types of abstracts: informative and descriptive ones.

An informative abstract summarizes the entire paper, including the key themes and purpose of the paper, major facts bearing on the conclusion, and a summary of key findings. It is short – from a paragraph to a page or two, depending upon the length of the original work being abstracted. Usually informative abstracts are 10% or less of the length of the original piece. This is the most common type of abstract.

A descriptive abstract, on the other hand, concentrates on identifying the purpose of the paper, and describing the major areas to be covered in the report, is always very short, usually under 100 words. It would be appropriate, for instance, in a review paper reporting on a survey of literature in a particular field. The descriptive abstract doesn’t say something like this – Problem: Based on and exhaustive review of currently available products, this report concludes that none of the available grammar-checking software products provides any useful functions to writers, (This is the style of summarizing you find in the informative abstract.) Instead, the descriptive abstract says something like this – Revision: this report provides conclusions and recommendations on the grammar-checking software that is currently available.