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A Comparative Analysis of Two Research Articles’ Abstracts

           

            Abstracts are the most important constituent parts of Research Articles. Hubbuch (1996) defines abstracts “as brief summaries of the major points made by an author in a book or article” (p.126). These pieces of writing are crucial tools as they give a first impression of the article and they help readers to decide whether to continue reading them or not.  Correspondingly, the American Psychological Association (2007) argues that if an abstract is accurate, informative and comprehensible, it will make the document readable. Although Swales and Feak (1994) and Hubbuch (1996) explain the main characteristics that an abstract should contain to become readable for the audience, none of the authors has given writers any piece of advice on how to make the abstract interesting and attractive for the reader. The purpose of this paper is to compare and contrast two research papers’ abstracts to find and expose their main differences and similarities. One of the articles, entitled “Implications of a 2005 Measles Outbreak in Indiana for Sustained Elimination of Measles in the United States” belongs to the medicine field. The other one, entitled “TESL-EJ: Conception and Potential of an Electronic Journal” belongs to the educational field, respectively.

            Both the medicine and the educational abstract share several similarities between them. To begin with, both of them transmit information in a clear, concise, neat and objective way. Accordingly, both of them express the major ideas or parts of the authors’ arguments and express clearly the ways these ideas are related to each other. For example, “High vaccination levels in the surrounding community and low rates of vaccine failure averted an epidemic” Parker et al., 2006) and “The nature and role of electronic journals have been widely discussed over the past few years, and there is an emerging consensus on the parameters of such journals and the space in which they operate” (Sussex, 1994).

            As regards their main differences between these two abstracts, two main aspects can be taken into consideration. The first one has to do with the length of them. Swales and Feak (1994) agree with Hubbuch (1996) in the fact that research papers’ abstracts should consist of a single paragraph containing from about four to ten full sentences. In this sense, these two abstracts differ from each other as the educational one consists of six sentences and the medicine one is divided into different paragraphs. The second aspect that should be mentioned is about the approaches which were used to write them. Swales and Feak (1994) argue that there are two approaches to writing abstracts: the results-driven approach and the research paper summary approach. The medicine abstract is a clear example of the results-driven approach as the writers concentrate on the research findings and what might be concluded from them. For example, “Approximately 500 persons attended a gathering with the index patient one day after her return home. Approximately 50 lacked evidence of measles immunity, of whom 16 (32 percent) acquired measles at the gathering” and “This outbreak was caused by the importation of measles into a population of children whose parents had refused to have them vaccinated because of safety concerns about the vaccine” (Parker et al., 2006). Quite the opposite, the educational article’s authors do not follow any approach to write their abstract as it does not present the results that were achieved in the research study and it is not divided into different sections either. Finally, tenses usage is quite different in these two articles. In the medicine article past tense is used to expose the methods section, For instance, “We conducted a case-series investigation, molecular typing of viral isolates, surveys of rates of vaccination coverage, interviews regarding attitudes toward vaccination, and cost surveys” (Parker et al., 2006). On the contrary, in the education abstract present perfect is used to expose the literature review. For example, “The nature and role of electronic journals have been widely discussed over the past few years, and there is an emerging consensus on the parameters of such journals and the space in which they operate” (Sussex, 1994).

            All in all, after analyzing and comparing the two abstracts which belong to the medicine and the educational field, it could be concluded that both of them present and explain the main points of the paper to be developed by the researchers. Despite the fact that many differences have been found, those variations seem to be related to the discipline that the author belongs to and do not affect the abstracted work. Nonetheless, all the authors succeeded in including the mandatory components as well as making their documents readable by providing the reader with accurate, comprehensible and informative summaries of their completed work.    

References

             American Psychological Association (2007). Concise rules of APA style. Washington, DC: British Library Cataloguing-in- Publication Data.

              Amy A. Parker, M.S.N., M.P.H., Wayne Staggs, M.S., Gustavo H. Dayan, M.D., Ismael R. Ortega-Sánchez, Ph.D., Paul A. Rota, Ph.D., Luis Lowe, M.S., Patricia Boardman, B.S., R.N., Robert Teclaw, D.V.M., Ph.D., Charlene Graves, M.D., and Charles W. LeBaron, M.D. (2006). Implications of a 2005 Measles Outbreak in Indiana for Sustained Elimination of Measles in the United States. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 2006; 355:447-455 DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa060775.

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

            Sussex, R. (1994). TESL-EJ: Conception and Potential of an Electronic Journal. (Centre for Language Teaching and Research). Queensland,   AUS: University of Queensland.

            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 Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.