What is the power of a good abstract? When going about your research for primary and secondary sources, you must have encountered a ton of publications. You did not, however, have to peruse each document, you instead looked at the abstracts to determine the papers that were best suited for your research.
Similar to the abstracts you considered during research, your abstract determines the number of people who will interact with your paper. Your abstract should thus tackle the key points of your research in a clear manner, and cover necessary keywords to ensure a high ranking on various databases.
Owing to the precise nature of the abstract, it is not a surprise that many students opt to buy dissertation abstract online. Here, we will analyse various tips for writing a dissertation abstract, helping you overcome popular challenges reported by scholars.
What is an abstract in a dissertation?
An abstract is a quick overview of your paper describing your methodology and summarizing the purpose, findings, and implications of your paper. This 300-500 words-long summary usually highlights the key points of your research paper and is used by search engines and databases for indexing your work.
How to write a dissertation abstract
Condensing your paper to less than five hundred words without compromising its essence often proves a hard task. What should I pick? What should be omitted? These are some of the questions you may find yourself asking when writing an abstract for a dissertation.
A great way to overcome this confusion is by limiting your abstract to the purpose, methodology, findings, and implications of your work.
Purpose
The purpose of your dissertation refers to the value of your research. What gap warrants the study? What do you hope to achieve through the research?
When writing your abstract, these answers should occupy the first sentences, helping a reader to quickly establish the relevance of your paper to their needs. You may opt to start your abstract with a relevant fact or statistic that shows the necessity of your research, hooking readers into reading your work.
Methodology
When writing abstract for dissertation, the methodology should show the key approach you took to examine your research objectives. Here, mention the criteria used in selecting your sample, methods of data collection, data analysis approach, and a brief summary of your findings.
You may tackle the key finding to avoid exceeding the word count without touching on other crucial sections of your dissertation abstract.
Findings
When presenting findings in your abstract, present a summary of the findings to your key research objectives. Refrain from the urge to cover all the nitty gritty data you yielded in your research as this may push your abstract beyond the ideal word count range.
Implications
What does your paper suggest? This is a key question running through the minds of researchers when hunting for primary and secondary sources. Writing the implications of your paper in the abstract helps give readers a better grasp of your paper, making it easy to determine how it complements their work.
Tips for writing a dissertation abstract
- Read multiple abstract examples dissertation to familiarize yourself with the structure, style, and tone of abstracts. This will greatly help you in writing your abstract and allow you to gauge how your abstract compares with published papers.
- Consider developing a reverse outline after writing your paper to gauge the key points in your argument. These points can guide you in writing your abstract, ensuring that it captures the essence of your argument.
- Cut out the fluff in your abstract to ensure that you communicate all essential details within the word count. When editing your dissertation abstract, correct any instances of passive language and cut out any filler words you might have used.
- Avoid using jargon in your abstract as it may limit your ability to communicate an idea to your audience. You should only use topic-related terminologies that are crucial to your topic.
- Write your abstract last as you are better placed to analyse your paper, presenting an accurate summary of your claims.
- Avoid excess reliance on publications in your abstract as this may overshadow the findings of your paper, reducing the appeal of your paper to the reader.
- Don’t define terms in the abstract. This may exhaust precious words before you highlight the essence and findings of your research.
- Use keywords from various chapters in your abstract to help your ranking on databases.
Final take
Writing an abstract for a Ph.D. dissertation need not be a daunting process. These steps should guide you to write a quality abstract that helps a reader quickly gain the main idea of your paper and to ensure high rankings on various databases.
