Common weaknesses in traditional abstracts in the social sciences

Abstract

Detailed checklists and questionnaires have been used in the past to assess the quality of structured abstracts in the medical sciences. The aim of this article is to report the findings when a simpler checklist was used to evaluate the quality of 100 traditional abstracts published in 53 different social science journals. Most of these abstracts contained information about the aims, methods, and results of the studies. However, many did not report details about the sample sizes, ages, or sexes of the participants, or where the research was carried out. The correlation between the lengths of the abstracts and the amount of information present was 0.37 (p < .001), suggesting that word limits for abstracts may restrict the presence of key information to some extent. We conclude that authors can improve the quality of information in traditional abstracts in the social sciences by using the simple checklist provided in this article.

Genre-Based Analysis of Arabic Research Article Abstracts across Four Disciplines

“…Consequently, many potentially good research articles are overlooked because their abstracts have been written carelessly (Piqué-Noguera, 2012). Hartley andBetts (2009, p. 2015) were right when they said "it is possible that more papers might be read in detail if the abstracts were more informative. "…”

Thirteen Ways to Write an Abstract

“…The bipolar organization of spindles is essential for proper segregation of chromosomes, and requires plusend-directed homotetrameric motor proteins of the widely conserved kinesin-5 (BimC) family 3 . Hypotheses for bipolar spindle formation include the 'push−pull mitotic muscle' model, in which kinesin-5 and opposing motor proteins act between overlapping microtubules 2,4,5 .…”

“…Some authors, for instance, have evaluated abstracts using checklists, others rating scales, and others readability measures (and some all three-e.g., [4,18]). Some others have employed appropriate readers, whereas others have used some students, writers, and subject matter experts (e.g., [19]).…”

Cambio y estabilidad en resúmenes de una revista venezolana de educación (1997-2016)

“…Que se debería pensar en un destinatario que va a procesar, utilizar y aplicar el producto de las investigaciones, por lo que tiene mucho sentido que estos textos sean lo más informativos y completos posibles (Mosteller et al, 2004;Hartley, 2014Hartley, , 2009) con énfasis en lo que probablemente más buscan los lectores interesados, los resultados. En consecuencia, estudiar la estructuración de los resúmenes es una tarea vá-lida e importante.…”