By Joanne C. Preston, PhD
Editor-in-Chief of the Organization Development Journal

 

As an editor, I observe authors dash off abstracts, submit them without comment, and consider them complete. The abstract serves as an advertisement for the article. How do you read articles? I review the abstract to determine the value of the article. APA7 is generous, with 250 words in the abstract. There is much more to say than “These results show that this study has much to say to the field!” It is hard to believe, but I see this regularly in submitted articles.

Begin your abstract with a sentence or two about why this article is Important to literature and how it moves the thinking forward because it fills a gap that has not been addressed before.

The following sentence will talk about the Objectives of this article. What are the questions that you are answering with this work? What aims did you have for the study?

The Method needs some attention. Be clear about what you did to collect this information and why the method is valid and reliable. Include in this description the participants, the data collection techniques, and the analytical tools you used.

For the Results, you will explain the key ideas you found. There is not enough room to discuss everything you find in the abstract. These results are related to the key points that you will make in the discussion section, which is next. It is just a quick snapshot of the overall findings.

Implications and discussion are the last areas covered. This is where you mention the significant additions to the field, and for scholar/practitioner journals, you enlighten the readers on how they can use this information. This is the part that is missing. These statements are what compel individuals to review the entire 30-page study. You want to make an impact with these sentences so that the reader says, “I need to know more about this work because it influences my area.”

A fictional example of an abstract

Abstract

The literature on leadership is well documented, but there is a significant gap in how high school activities help develop future leadership. The objective of this study was to see how playing team sports develops leadership skills as opposed to individual sports activities. The subjects were 30 high school sophomores and juniors, of which 15 played team sports while the other 15 engaged in individual sports such as tennis. The participants were interviewed with open-ended questions piloted for reliability and validity. All subjects were given the Adams leadership skills test after each interview. SPSS analyzed the data. The results indicated a significant correlation in the leadership skills of those who engaged in individual sports compared to those who played team sports. This work may indicate that if you want to ensure college-bound students obtain leadership skills, have them play an individual sport. Individual sports seem to give the person full responsibility for the outcome and teach them more about leadership skills than team sports, which may spread the responsibility across the entire team.