Do trailers of movies like Barbie and Oppenheimer have anything in common with the abstract of your dissertation?
With all the current hype around the two record-breaking movies, you may well have watched their trailers. If so, did either of these trailers entice you to buy a ticket to see the movie? Maybe, maybe not.
And did the last abstract you read entice you to read the dissertation or journal article in full? Maybe, maybe not.
Both trailers and abstracts have some things in common. They are windows. The trailer is a window to the movie; the abstract is a window to your dissertation (Kumar, 2018). Both should entice the viewer to view the entire product or the reader to read the full product. The trailer introduces the key characters and a central conflict; the abstract introduces the research problem. But that’s about where the similarities end.
So, what are their differences?
Whereas the movie trailer ends on a cliffhanger with an unresolved conflict, the abstract presents a clear statement of the objectives and hypotheses (if applicable) of your study, as well as the design, the methods used, the study results, and their implications. All this should be stated in simple language within 250 words, together with key findings from your literature review.
Now let us consider the format of your dissertation abstract, based on APA 7th edition guidelines.
The abstract should be placed straight after the cover page, i.e., on the second page of the document. It should be labelled as “Abstract”, in bold and centred on the first line of the page. The text should begin on the line below this heading, flush left, i.e., not indented. It should be written as a single paragraph with double spacing unless otherwise instructed.
Keywords should be placed one line below the abstract with the label “Keywords:” in italics and indented, but not bolded. Three to five keywords should follow in any order, with a comma and space between them, and no full stop after the last word.
In our webinar on Thursday 3rd August at 6:30 pm (GMT+2:00), we’ll discuss how to write good titles and good abstracts.
Space is limited so click here now if you haven’t already registered.