Abstract writing

What is an abstract?

The abstract is a summary of the whole thesis. It presents all the major elements of your work in
a highly condensed form.

An abstract is a 150- to 250-word paragraph that provides readers with a quick overview of your
report and its organization. It should express your thesis (or central idea) and your key points; it
should also suggest any implications or applications of the research you discuss in the paper.

According to carole slade, an abstract is “a concise summary of the entire 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.

When is it necessary to write abstracts?

Abstracts are usually required for:

● Submission of articles to journals

● Application for research grants

● Completion and submission of theses

● Submission of proposals for conference papers.

Elements of abstract:

All abstracts generally cover the following five sections:

 1. Reason for writing: Clearly define the purpose and importance of your research. This
includes a statement of the problem or issue.
What is the importance of the research? Why would a Reader be interested in the larger
work?

2. Problem: What problem does this work attempt to solve? What is the main argument, thesis
or claim?

3. Methodology: State the research methods used to answer your question.

An abstract of a scientific work may include specific models or approaches used in the larger
study. Other Abstracts may describe the types of evidence used in The research.

4. Results: Summarize the main research results. An abstract of a scientific work may include
specific data

That indicates the results of the project. Other abstracts May discuss the findings in a more
general way.

5. Implications: What are the implications of your research? How does this work add to the
body of knowledge on The topic? Are there any practical or theoretical Applications from your
findings or implications for future Research?

Typically, an abstract for a paper or presentation is one paragraphs long (150-250 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

What to avoid when writing an abstract?

When you are writing your abstract, you should avoid:

● referring to other works

● Lengthy background or contextual information,

● Redundant phrases, unnecessary adverbs and adjectives, and repetitive information;

● Acronyms or abbreviations,

● Any sort of image, illustration, figure, or table, or references to them.

● Defining any terms

● Adding information that isn't contained in the larger work

● Adding unnecessary filler words and obscure jargon

● The function of an abstract is to describe, not to evaluate or defend, the paper. (what did

it find out about these causes?)

Your abstract should read like an overview of your paper, not a proposal for what you
intended to study or accomplish. Avoid beginning your sentences with phrases like, “this
essay will examine...” Or “in this research paper i will attempt to prove...”

Which tense should be used in the abstract of a paper?

While writing your abstract, you can use several tenses depending on the subject of your
sentence. You can keep in mind the general rules regarding tense usage while you write your
Abstract:

● Use present tense while stating general facts

● Use past tense when writing about prior research

 ● Use past tense when stating methodology, results or observations

● Use present tense when stating the conclusion or interpretations

Keywords writing

A keyword is a specific word that someone types into a search engine to find a topic they are
looking for. Key words contain 3-5 words. If database search engines can find your journal
manuscript, readers will be able to find it too. This will increase the number of people reading
your manuscript, and likely lead to more citations. However, to be effective, Keywords must be
chosen carefully. They should:

Represent the content of your manuscript. Be specific to your field or sub-field

 Results & Discussion Writing
Results chapters

This is the chapter/section that tells your reader what you found, or what the results of your
research were. The results are normally written up using complete paragraphs but are often
supported by tables and/or graphs. The choices you make about how to present your results
depend on the conventions used in your discipline, what you were trying to find, and the
methodology you used.

Results sections should be organized so that they reflect:

• the methods outlined in the methodology chapter and the sequence of information presented in
the methods section; and

• the aims or research question/s outlined in the Introduction.

They should build on what readers already understand of your research. Results sections should
present only the results/ findings and should not include interpretations of the results.
Interpretation belongs only in a discussion section.

Results sections can, in some disciplines, be combined with discussion in a ‘Results and
Discussion’ chapter/section. This is often the case in disciplines such as Engineering and
Education. In combined sections, the presentation of results and the discussion of those results
should occur in different sub-sections.

To give a holistic picture of classification data can divided into two types

● Quantitative data (numerical)

● Qualitative data (descriptive)

Principle importance of data presentation

● To arrange the data in such a way that it should create interest in the reader’s mind at

the first sight

 ● To present the information in a compact and concise form without losing important

details.

● To present the data in a simple form so as to draw the conclusion directly by viewing

at the data

How to write a results section/How to Organize the Results Section

● Language: Verb tense choices in results sections

You should write your results section in the past tense: you are describing what you
have done in the past., for example: “The sap of E. viminalis accounted for 94% of the
feeding observation time …”
Occasionally, however, present tense is used when describing a table or graph or figure
eg : “Table 1 gives the number of days that the subjects used the drug”, or when
comparing results eg “the data obtained in study 1 show differences in size when
compared with study 2”.
Only include results that are directly relevant to answering your research questions.
Avoid speculative or interpretative words like “appears” or “implies.”

● Always start out with your broadest results first and then flow into your more granular

(but still relevant) ones.

● Key results should be stated in clear sentences at the beginning of paragraphs. Describe

the nature of the findings; do not just tell the reader whether or not they are significant.

● The results are actual statements of observations, including statistics, tables and graphs.

Common Elements in Figures and Tables.

Common elements of the figures (Bahadoran, 2019):

✔ Figure number
 ✔ Figure title

✔ Figure legend (for example a brief title, experimental/statistical information, or definition

of symbols).

✔ Data

✔ Labels

Tables in the result section may contain several elements (Bahadoran, 2019):

✔ Table number

✔ Table title

✔ Row headings (for example groups)

✔ Column headings

✔ Data
 ✔ Row subheadings (for example categories or groups)

✔ Column subheadings (for example categories or variables)

✔ Footnotes (for example statistical analyses)

Discussion Section

It’s not enough to use figures and tables in your result section to convince your readers about the
importance of your findings. You need to support your result section by providing more
explanation in the discussion section about what you found.

The function of a discussion section is to:

• interpret the results presented in the results section; and

• discuss them in relation to your research question and to the results of previous
research in the field.
• Justify your approach
• Critically evaluate your study
Of course, to present any discussion about results from previous research, you must already have
introduced this research in your literature review. Discussion chapters also often include sub-
sections on issues arising from the study, or that detail the implications of the research.

The discussion section is the most creative section of your paper in terms of telling a story about
your research (Ghasemi, 2019; Moore, 2016). In this section, based on your findings, you defend
the answers to your research questions and create arguments to support your conclusions.

Start with a few sentences that summarize the most important results. Below is a list of
questions to guide you when organizing the structure of your discussion section (Viera et
al., 2018):

1. What do the results mean? What are the major patterns in the observations?
(Refer to spatial and temporal variations.)
2. What are the relationships, trends and generalizations among the results?
3. How did the results answer your research questions?
4. What are the likely causes (mechanisms) underlying these patterns resulting
predictions?
5. Did your results support your hypothesis or reject your hypothesis?
6. What are the variables or factors that might affect your results?
7. What were the strengths and limitations of your study?
8. What other published works support your findings? Is there agreement or
disagreement with previous work?
9. What other published works contradict your findings?
10. What possible factors might cause your findings different from other findings?
11. What is the significance of your research? What is the implication of the present
results for other unanswered questions in earth sciences, ecology, environmental
policy, etc....?

How to Write a Discussion Section

1. Interpret results in terms of background laid out in the introduction.

2. Start with a few sentences that summarize the most important results.
3. Include the evidence or line of reasoning supporting each interpretation. This
section should be rich in references to similar work and the background
 needed to interpret results. However, interpretation/discussion section(s) are
often too long and verb.
4. Language: Verb tense choices in discussion sections

Discussion sections or chapters use a range of tenses depending on whether results are being
discussed, or whether claims or generalizations based on the results are being made. Notice the
changes in tense in the following example from a Biology thesis: present tense is used when
making statements about how things are, while past tense is used when making statements
about what was found.

Flow of discussion section

The structure of the discussion section may be different from one paper to another, but it
commonly has a beginning, middle-, and end- to the section.

Present the contents of your section from narrow context (your study) to broader context (your
field of study) (Ghasemi, 2019). One way to organize the structure of the discussion section is by
dividing it into three parts (Ghasemi, 2019):
The beginning part: The first sentence of the first paragraph should state the importance and the
new findings of your research. The first paragraph may also include answers to your research
questions mentioned in your introduction section.

The middle part: The middle should contain the interpretations of the results to defend your
answers, the strength of the study, the limitations of the study, and an update literature review
that validates your findings. Comparison of your results with other published works.

The end part: The end concludes the study and the significance of your research. possible
implications of your study.