A Comparative Analysis of Abstracts in Research Articles in the Fields of Medicine and Education

Introduction   

Being part of a discourse community entails knowing how to cope with academic writing requirements as regards genres and styles used in academic papers such as Research Articles (RAs).  Abstracts are important parts of RAs, which according to the American Psychological Association (APA) (2008) may be defined as “(…) brief, comprehensive summaries of the contents of an article” (p.12).  Furthermore, Abstracts should offer concise information of the sections included in RAs that would enable readers to have an accurate preview and decide whether to access or not the entire text. Thus, Abstracts are brief descriptions which should encapsulate the problems or issues to be addressed, the hypotheses being examined, the methods and approaches, the key findings, and the conclusions or discussions which emerge from research studies in different scientific fields.

The present study attempts to compare and analyze four abstracts included in RAs in the fields of medicine and education, taking into consideration their structure, distinctive characteristics and format following APA conventions and Swales and Feak’s (1994) guidelines.  Abstracts analyzed in the present paper describe and summarize a case study on the use of venlafaxine (Martinez et al., 2010), a retrospective cohort analysis of patients 80 years of age or older with hypertension (Beckett et al., 2008), a conference paper report about teaching narratology through films (Kokonis, 1993) and a research project on the use of video in English Foreign Language (EFL) classrooms (Rammal, 2006).

 

Type and Structure 

Swales and Feak (1994) state that Abstracts may be informative or indicative which specifies the kind of research that has been done. Beckett et al. (2008) and Martinez et al. (2010) have included informative abstracts in their RAs which contain significant and accurate descriptions of the different sections such as Methods, Results and Conclusions.  Both abstracts fulfill Swales and Feak’s (1994) informative Abstracts requirements which should be heavy on data and fully descriptive of what has been studied and concluded.  RAs specially aimed at specialists in the field of medicine should provide relevant and detailed information as regards findings so that readers can spot valuable information and access the whole RA if decided.

As regards Rammal’s (2006) and Kokonis’ (1993) abstracts, they are indicative since the former provides a brief and general summary of what can be found in the RA, and the latter is a conference paper which suggests possible application of video in the classroom, thus it does not include specific results (Swales & Feak, 1994).  The use of indicative type in the Abstracts from the educational field analyzed in this study may be related to the fact that educational research projects and conference papers aim at encouraging educators to put new techniques, projects and teaching materials into practice, not at showing conclusive and strong results partly due to the nature of educational findings.

Regarding structure, Abstracts can be structured or unstructured (Swales & Feak, 1994).  Both Abstracts from the field of medicine are divided into short sections signaled by subtitles written in bold, clearly describing the objectives and main parts of the RAs.  In Beckett et al. (2008) there is also an opening sentence about previous studies of antihypertensive therapy. Methods are also described, Martinez et al. (2010) presents more detailed information about the participants and the kind of study developed.  In both articles results are explained specifically, including ciphers and percentages.  Conclusions are stated in both cases with a simple and concise sentence according to the results obtained.  The fact that they possess individualized headings may be related to the possibility of providing the reader with a quick preview of the sections and summaries in order to access the required information.

Conversely, Abstracts from the educational field are unstructured since they consist of one long paragraph without division of sections.  Whereas Rammal’s (2006) abstract provides brief, general information and somewhat insufficient to provide the reader an accurate picture of the sections included, Kokonis’ (1993) conference abstract is concise, longer and presents a detailed description of the objectives of the study as well as the advantages of the use of videos in the classroom.  Thus it may give the reader a broad picture of what is studied and suggested by Kokonis (1993).  In contrast with medicine RAs’ Abstracts, educational RAs’ Abstracts do not mention the results obtained possibly due to the fact that educational research studies cannot reach conclusive and applicable results to every situation as it is the case of medicine.

 Linguistic features

 Abstracts analyzed in this paper follow Swales (1990), Swales and Feak (1994) requirements as regards linguistic features since authors make use of full sentences to describe aspects of the different studies, as well as different linguistic specifications in terms of the use of impersonal passive and tenses. There is absence of negatives and use of jargon; abbreviations are not included except for Beckett et al.’s (2008) paper where the results section mentions some statistics so as to have a better understanding of percentages and ciphers.  The use of impersonal passive is present in Beckett et al. (2008): “it has been suggested that antihypertensive therapy may reduce the risk of stroke (...)” (p.1).  However, it should be stated that Becket et al. (2008) use the pronoun “we” when describing the method followed, possibly because researchers need to assert their responsibility on the study.

Regarding tenses, the predominant tense usage is present, although there are some variations due to the development of the abstracts.  In the case of Martinez et al. (2010), the objectives are stated in present tense and the description of the methods, results and conclusion are written in past tense, to put emphasis on what researchers did and what the results obtained were. Similarly, in Beckett et al. (2008) present and past tenses are mostly used, with a statement of an opening sentence using present perfect tense.  Although in Rammal (2006) the future tense is used to show emphasis on a distinctive feature such as identity and culture, both Abstracts from the educational field have a predominance of present tenses.

 APA Conventions

Abstracts’ length is an important issue to consider according to APA (2008) conventions which points out that they should not be longer than two-hundred words in order to fulfill their function as a summary.  In the medicine field, Beckett et al. (2008) produced an Abstract of more than three-hundred words, unlike Martinez et al. (2010) who produced it in almost three-hundred words. In both cases, Abstracts surpassed APA (2008) conventions as regards number of words.  Length and complexity of research studies in the field of medicine may result in longer RAs and therefore more elaborated, structured and longer Abstracts.

Unlike Abstracts in medicine RAs, the educational RAs analyzed contain two-hundred words or less. Kokonis’s (1993) Abstract summarizes his conference paper following APA conventions, whereas Rammal’s (2006) Abstract does not even reach the standard number of words dictated by APA (2008).

Conclusion 

After having analyzed Abstracts in the medicine as well as in the educational field, it should be stated that Rammal’s (2006) Abstract would not fulfill Swales and Feak (1994) requirements and APA (2008) conventions as mentioned above since it does not have the basic requisites of providing a clear and concise summary of the entire text; it only provides general information and therefore is not coherent with the structure of the whole RA.  Beckett et al. (2008), Martinez et al. (2010) and Kokonis (1993) would meet APA (2008) requirements of readability, coherence, and accuracy since they may effectively reach readers’ expectations as regards clarity and smoothness. It may be stated that the present study not only provides valuable insights into Abstracts’ structure, type, format and linguistic features but it also sheds light on the relevance of developing concise and effective Abstracts.   

References

American Psychological Association. (2008). Publication Manual (5th ed.). Washington, DC: British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data.

 

Beckett, N.S., Peters, R., Fletcher, A. E., Staessen, J.A., Liv, L., Dumitrascu, D., ... Bulpitt, C.J. (2008). Treatment of hypertension in patients 80 years of age or older [Abstract]. The New England Journal of Medicine, 358 (18), 1887 - 1898. Retrieved from http://www.nejm.org

Kokonis, M. (1993). The video in the classroom: Agatha Christie’s “Evil under the sun” and the teaching of narratology through film [Abstract]. Proceedings from: The Symposium of the International Visual Literacy Association. Delphi, Greece.

 

Martinez, C., Assimes T. L., Mines, D., Dell’ Aniello S., & Suissa, S. (2010). Use of venlafaxine compared with other antidepressants and the risk of sudden cardiac death or near death: a nested case-control study [Abstract]. British Medical Journal, 340. DOI: 10.136/bmj.c249 

Rammal, S.M. (2006). Video in EFL classrooms [Abstract]. Retrieved from: http://www.usingenglish.com/articles/video-in-efl-classrooms.html 

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.