Delving into Abstracts from Different Fields of Study

Delving into Abstracts from Different Fields of Study

The demands of discourse community require advanced literacy as a means to equip teachers and active researchers and to help them become fully-fledged professionals. Intensive reading and writing skills are essential to analyze Research Papers (RP), their components and their specific features in depth.  The abstract is one of these components and it is a very important section since it summarizes the content of the whole document and provides the reader with a concrete idea about what he will find in the research paper.  

The goal of this paper is to compare the abstracts included in four different research papers.  Two of them belong to the education field, whereas the other two are exponents of research papers in the medicine field.  Since abstracts are useful guidelines for readers to choose between one specific RP or another one, they should be written in a clear, concise, neat and objective fashion to present the audience with “a brief summary of the major points made by an author in a book or article” (Hubbuch, 1996, cited in Crimi and Pintos, 2010, p.11). 

Concerning the educational papers, Almerich’s et al. (2005) include in their work the differences in knowledge of the technological resources in teachers and the abstract section is written in both languages, English and Spanish.  This paragraph is organized into introduction, study objective, materials, participants and methods, results and conclusion with clear linguistic introductions for each part.  For example, the researchers state that “the sample is composed of 868 teachers and the questionnaire is the instrument of collection of the information.” (Almerich et al, 2005, p.127). 

Conversely, King (2002) organizes her article about the use of DVD feature films in EFL classrooms in a different way since she produces a highly descriptive paragraph. First, King (2002) presents her assumption about the replacement of VHS by DVD and then, she enumerates the characteristics of this new movie medium as a means to support her findings.  Finally, she mentions her research objectives and makes suggestions about the criteria to be applied when using DVDs in the EFL classroom.

Comparing these two papers, it can be assumed that their abstracts can be classified as unstructured but only one of them, Almerich´s et al. (2005), follows the Introduction-Methods-Results-And-Discussions (IMRAD) formula.  In addition, this aforementioned section is more informative in nature because it describes what the researchers did and it relies on the obtained data.  Besides, Almerich´s et al. (2005) include the use of keywords in a separated box, to help the audience anticipate the main concepts to be developed in the research paper.  On the other hand, King´s (2002) work does not include precise data on samples or results.

As regards language, Almerich’s et al. (2005) abstract is characterized by an abundant use of passive voice.  Examples of this linguistic resource that can be found in the paper are “the study is based in a survey design” and “it is analyzed how gender...” (Almerich, 2005, p.127).  In contrast, King (2002) develops her abstract using active voice and she includes passive forms only at the end of her paragraph by stating “selection criteria for choosing appropriate films to promote active viewing and engage involvement for making the most of DVD films are provided”.

In the analysis of the two RPs from the medicine field, it could be inferred that their abstracts can be classified as structured since both contain bolded subheadings which identify the main sections in the paper.  However, the sections in Austin´s et al. (2010) work, such as objective, design, setting, participants, interventions, main outcome measures, results and conclusion, differ from the one included in Anderson´s et al. (2008) paper in which only background, methods, results and conclusion are mentioned.

Regarding tense usage, both papers are based on precise data and the abstracts look at the past especially when referring to methods and results.  In contrast, simple present is used for background and conclusion sections.  These paragraphs describe experimental processes and the researchers make use of passive voice to allude the ways in which the results were obtained and analyzed.  Anderson et al. (2008) state that “active treatment was associated with a 30% reduction in the rate of…” (p. 1887) and Austin et al. (2010) claim that “score methods were used to reduce important differences…” (p.1).

Taking the four RPs into consideration, there are differences between the abstracts developed in the medicine field and the ones belonging to the educational area.  The former field is characterized by quantitative data while the latter gives primacy to qualitative research.  Consequently, the abstracts are permeated by these features and the researchers appeal to different devices as the inclusion of percentages in the medicine papers and use of adjectives of high frequency occurrence in the educational works.

All in all, it could be inferred that the four abstracts reflect a clear and scientific prose achieved by “continuity in words, concepts and thematic development” (APA, 2008, p. 32).  Furthermore, there are certain features which are common to the four abstracts; for example, the use of full sentences, the use of impersonal passive and the absence of negatives.  Additionally, there are certain requirements to be met when writing an abstract but these requirements might vary depending on the field of study.  What is more, abstracts belonging to the same field differ in structure, organization of information, tense usage, etc. 

It is worth mentioning that each discipline establishes its own criteria to be applied when writing the abstract for an academic paper.  Nevertheless, each abstract possesses a distinctive characteristic which defines it according to the field which the paper belongs to; and at the same time, this specific feature makes the difference even among research papers from the same field.  Finally, the researchers should bear in mind the potential readers when developing their academic papers to provoke the intended impact on the scholar world by inviting the target audience to continue reading their publications.  

                                                            

References

Almerich, G., Belloch, C., Bo, R., Gastaldo, I.,  Orellana, N., & Suárez, J.M. (2005). Diferencias en los conocimientos de los recursos tecnológicos en profesores a partir del género, edad y tipo de centro.  Revista Electrónica de Investigación y Evaluación Educativa (RELIEVE), 11(2), 127-146. Retrieved May, 2012 from http://caece.campusuniversidad.com.ar/mod/resource/view.php?id=14137

American Psychological Association (2008). Publication Manual (5th ed.). Washington, DC: British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data.

Anderson, C., Antikainen, R. L., Banya, W., Becket, N., Bulpitt, C. J., Dumitrascu, D. …  Thijs, L. (2008). Treatment of hypertension in patients 80 years of age or older. The New England Journal of Medicine. 358 (18), 1887-1898. Retrieved May, 2012 from http://caece.campusuniversidad.com.ar/mod/resource/view.php?id=14141

Austin, P. C., Beattie, W. S., Elliot, R. F., Hux, J. E., Laupacis, A. & Wijeysundera, D. N. (2010). Non- invasive cardiac stress testing before elective major non-cardiac surgery: population based cohort study. BMJ; 340b:b5526, doi: 10.1136/bmj.b5526.

King, J. (2002). Using DVD feature films in the EFL classroom. The weekly column. Article 88, abstract section. Retrieved May, 2012 from http://caece.campusuniversidad.com.ar/mod/resource/view.php?id=14144