Research Articles: Analysis of Four Abstracts

An abstract is the first section of a research article; however, it must be written last since it summarizes the content of the paper. As stated by Hubbuch (1996), abstracts are “brief summaries of the major points made by an author in a book or article” (p. 126). The aim of including an abstract is to transmit information in a clear, concise, neat, and objective way. Research Article (RA) abstracts consist of a single paragraph of approximately four to ten sentences (Swales & Feak, 1994). There is a wide range of material describing the specific features of abstracts; but there are no papers comparing and contrasting the abstracts of the following four articles, two in the field of medicine (Devereaux et al., 2014 and Klauer et al., 2014) and two in the field of education (Lys, 2013 and AbuSeileek, 2014). Therefore, the purpose of this work is to analyze this section in the above mentioned articles and identify any similarities and differences between them.

            In relation to abstract type, classification and approach to writing, both similarities and differences can be observed in the four abstracts under study. First, the four of them are informative since they belong to research reports and provide readers with the main findings of the studies conducted by describing what the researchers did, that is, by looking to the past (Swales and Feak, 1994; Swales, 1990). However, there are differences in terms of structure. The two abstracts of the articles in the medicine field are structured because they are subdivided into paragraphs, each preceded by a bolded heading identifying a section of the article. On the other hand, the abstracts of the articles in the field of education are unstructured since they consist of only one unbroken paragraph with no headings (Swales and Feak, 1994; Swales, 1990). Moreover, while Lys (2013) has adopted a results-driven approach to writing her abstract, by mainly focusing on the findings of her research and the conclusions (Swales and Feak, 1994), the other three abstracts follow a RP summary approach, since they either provide a few sentences for each of the main sections of their article (AbuSeileek, 2014) in one unbroken paragraph or they provide clearly identified paragraphs for each section of the article (Klauer et al., 2014; Devereaux et al., 2014).

       With respect to linguistic features, there are several specifications that deserve to be mentioned (Swales, 1990; Swales and Feak, 1994). In the abstracts of the four articles, there are full sentences, and the past tense prevails. Some examples of the prevailing use of the past tense in this section are “On average, students spent twenty-four minutes a week in video conversations on Face-Time alone”(Lys, 2013, p.94), “The primary outcome was a composite of death or nonfatal myocardial infarction at 30 days” (Devereaux et al., 2014.p. 1494) and “This study investigated the effect of using computer-mediated corrective feedback on EFL learners' performance in writing (AbuSeileek, 2014, p.76). The use of impersonal passive in the four articles is scarce, and there is an absence of negatives, abbreviations and jargon. Another linguistic feature that pertains to the abstracts in the field of education, not present in the abstracts in the field of medicine, is the use of the first person singular and the use of the expression the study. Lys (2013) uses the first person singular as in the expressions “I investigate” or “I am interested” (p. 94). On the other hand, AbuSeileek (2014) does not use the first person, but this author has included the expression the study as in “This study investigated” or “The study yielded” (p. 76).

            As far as format is concerned, the abstracts of the articles in the field of medicine (Klauer et al., 2014; Devereaux et al., 2014) show important differences when compared to the articles in the field of education (Lys, 2013; AbuSeileek, 2014). In the first place, the former include the word Abstract, centered on the page and written with all capital letters, as heading for the section whereas in the latter no headings have been included. In addition, the authors of the medical articles have done without keywords while those in the field of education have included them below the text of the abstract. It should be noted, however, that American Psychological Association (APA) (2010) conventions have not been followed in this respect since the word Keywords should be centered and italicized and it should not be followed by a colon (OWL, 2010). Nor has APA style been respected in relation to other formatting rules in the education abstracts. Not only did the authors omit the word Abstract, as mentioned above, but they also failed to include the abstract on a separate page and to double space the text. Finally, the articles in the field of medicine do not follow APA conventions either since the abstracts do not appear on a separate page and are not double-spaced, and because only the first letter of the word Abstract should have been capitalized (OWL, 2010). Nevertheless, it must be observed that articles in the field of medicine generally use a formatting style other than APA.

         All in all, since the four analysed abstracts types are informative, they describe what the researchers did during the course of the research and state their findings. As far as structure is concerned, the abstracts of the articles from the field of medicine are structured whereas the ones from the educational field are unstructured. The approach to writing in both kinds of abstracts is different as well: While Lys (2013) places the emphasis on the results derived from the research, the other authors provide a brief summary of the steps followed during the research. On the other hand, the analysed abstracts share a number of similar linguistic features as regards the use of full sentences, the use of the past tense, the minimum use of impersonal passive, as well as the absence of negatives, abbreviations and jargon. None of the abstracts under analysis apply APA (2010) conventions. Regardless of the stated differences in format, structure and kind of approach, the four abstracts succeed in drawing the potential readers’ attention to continue reading the articles, which constitutes one of the main purposes for abstract writing.

References

AbuSeileek, A. & Abu-al-Sha´r, A. (2014). Using peer computer-mediated corrective feedback to support EFL learners´ writing. Language Learning and Technology, 19(1), 76-95. Retrieved from http://llt.msu.edu/issues/february2014/abuseileekabualshar.pdf

American Psychological Association (2010). Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. 6^th edition. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Devereaux, P.J., Mrkobrada, M., Sessler, D.I., Leslie, K., Alonso-Coello, P., Kurz, A.,… Yusuf, S. (2014). Aspirin in patients undergoing noncardiac surgery. The New England Journal of  Medicine. Retrieved from http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1401105

Hubbuch, S. M. (1996). Writing research papers across the curriculum. (4th ed.). Harcourt Brace: Fort Worth, TX.

Klauer, S., Guo, F., Simmons-Morton, B., Ouimet, M., Lee, S., & Dingus, T. (2014). Distracted driving and risk of road crashes among novice and experienced drivers. The New England Journal of Medicine. DOI 10.1056/NEJMsa1204142.

Lys, F. (2013). The development of advanced learner oral proficiency using ipads. Language Learning and Technology Journal. Retrieved from http://llt.msu.edu/issues/october2013/lys.pdf

Purdue University Online Writing Lab (OWL). (2010). General Format. Retrieved February, 25th, 2010, from http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/

Swales, J.M. (1990). Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings. (Cambridge Applied Linguistics Series). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Swales, J.M., & Feak, C.B. (1994). Academic writing for graduate students: Essential tasks and skills. Ann Harbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press.