THE COMPONENTS CONTAINED IN THE ABSTRACT

 

In a scientific work or paper, there is a page called an abstract. This abstract contains a brief description of the contents of the scientific work. A person who does not need to read a full volume of scientific or written works to see the problem, purpose, method, and results of scientific research or written work but simply reads only one page of the page. One abstract page represents the content of a scientific work or written work in total. Then what components are contained in the abstract?

Abstract is an overview or essence of an essay. Apart from that, an abstract can also be said to be a summary of an essay. The following are the components contained in the abstract of scientific papers or written works based on the latest information of my scientific papers or known papers. It could be that the following abstract rules differ from one place to another or differ between scientific or written works and theses.

The components that are in the abstract of scientific papers or papers

1. The first line contains: Last Name, First Name, title of research or scientific work or writing

2. The next line contains: Keywords that consist of several words,

3. The next line consists of four paragraphs:

• The first paragraph contains the background to the problem

• The second paragraph contains a brief description of the problem, purpose, and usefulness of the research.

• Paragraphs containing research consisting of: research approach, type of research, data techniques, and data analysis techniques used.

• The fourth paragraph contains the research results and conclusions.

That is what components are contained in an abstract of a scientific paper or written work. The maximum length of an abstract of a scientific paper or written work is one page.

Abstract writing patterns or styles can generally be divided into two structured and unstructured or traditional forms. Structured abstracts are different from traditional abstracts. A structured abstract consists of five stages, namely the background, objectives, methods, results and conclusions. Meanwhile, in traditional abstracts, according to Swales and Feak (2009), the stages are not complete, but they are given subtitles at each stage while structured abstracts are not.

According to Swales and Feak (2009), structured abstracts with stages without subtitles were introduced since 1987 in the fields of medical and health sciences and since then have been used in other fields of science. In 2007, according to Swales and Feak, ERIC (the Educational Research Information Center) a very large American bibliographic database said they would only use structured abstracts without including subtitles at each stage. Below is presented an example of a structured abstract, but subtitled written by James Harley, a British professor of psychology who wrote a literature review article entitled 'Current Findings from Research on Structured Abstract' and published in 2004. Example quoted below in Swales and Feak (2009: 26).

Background: Structred abstracts were introduced into medical research journals in the mid-1980s. Since then they have been widely used in this and other contexts.

Aim: The aim of this paper is to summarize the man fidnings from research on structured abstracts and to discuss the limitations of some aspects of this research.

Method: A narrative literature review of all the relevant papers known to the author was conducted.

Results: Structured abstracts are typically longer than traditional ones, but they are also judges to be more informative and accessable. Authors and readers also judge them to be more useful than traditional abstracts. However, not all studies used ‘real-life’ published examples from different authors in their work, and more work needs to be done in some cases.

Conclusions: The findings generally support the notion that structured abstracts can be ptofitably introduced into research journals. Some arguments for this, however, have some support than others.

Unstructured or traditional abstracts do not have complete stages or moves. The author can only present the objectives, methods, and research results or less. Below is presented an example of an unstructured or traditional abstract taken from Swales and Feak (2009: 3).

Many scholars claim that democracy improves the welfare of the poor. This article uses data on infant and child mortality to challenge this claim. Cross-national studies tend to exclude from their samples non-democratic states that have performed well; this leads to the mistaken inefernce that non-democracies have worse records than democracies. Once these and other flaws are corrected, democracy has little or no effect on infant and chile mortality rates. Democracies spend more money on education and health than non-democracies, but these benefits seem to accrue to middle-and upper-income groups.

Although it is rare to find, structured abstracts that include subtitles at each stage of the abstract can still be found in certain fields of science today. Below is presented an abstract sample taken from the journal Aphasiology published by Psychology Press, a member of the Taylor and Francis Group publishing house.

Background: The progressive interest in social activities within the life and clinical efforts of persons with aphasia makes it necessary to focus more clinical attention on conversation as a site for therapy and as a goal for intervention. A number of innovative approaches have been designed, but most fall sort when authentic conversation is considered. Aims: This article provides one alternative to thoseintervention approaches. It aims toimprove the interactional abilities of persons with aphasia by addressing authentic conversation.  The intervention approach, Facilitating Authentic Conversation (FAC), is described in detail byproviding its theoretical basis, the practical guide lines for itsorganisation and design, and its implementation procedure. Additionally, a case studyis provided that addresses two questions: does this approach reduce targeted problematic behaviours in conversations and does this approach increase the utilisation ofeffective strategies during conversations. Methods & Procedures: Constructivism and conversation analysis are used to design a therapy approach that includes an analysis procedure  and  various  strategies  to  achieve a therapeutic effect during authentic conversation. Using qualitative and quantitative techniques derived from conversation analysis, evidence for change within conv er sations is pr ovided.

Outcomes & Results: Evidence suggests that this intervention approach assisted inchanging the conversational behaviours of the person with aphasia (PWA) who served as the case study. Two conversational strategies that were highlighted via several specific the rapeutic techniques were found to have reduced specific   problematic conversational behaviours 19 months post- onset.

 

Conclusions: The article describes an innovative therapeutic approach that employs authentic conversation as the primary vehicle for intervention. The case study provided with this description provides evidence that identified problematic behaviours can be modified through constructivist principles that expose the PWA to beneficial strategies used to over come conversational barriers due to        aphasia.(Damico dkk.., 2015)

As seen in the example above, the stages or moves in the abstract are characterized by a subheading: background, aims, methods & procedures, outcomes & results, and conclusions. Abstract writing style like this is a combination of traditional style and structured style. Unlike the traditional abstracts which do not have complete stages, this abstract is written in five stages, however, each section contains a subtitle. Structured abstract writing styles with subtitles are still widely found today in journal articles in certain fields of science, such as the journal Aphasiology, Acta Medica Indonesiana, the Journal of the Medical Library Association, and others. The author of the article must follow the abstract writing style applied to the particular journal to which his writing will be submitted.