The research report: The abstract, acknowledgment and dedication

THE last sections to write in a research report are the abstract, the acknowledgments and dedication. The abstract “follows directly after the title page and precedes the main body of the paper.” Written in the past tense, the abstract is recommended to be written after the rest of the research paper has been completed. It is a clear, concise, coherent and self-contained one paragraph digest or summary of all the major elements of the research—that is, the research “purpose, main points, method, findings, and conclusions.” It is a mini version of a research paper, a short statement of the research “designed to give the reader a complete, yet concise, understanding of (the) research and its findings.” One or more concise sentences in the abstract should be a summary of each chapter of a thesis or dissertation. No need to repeat figures and tables, abbreviations and literature review or reference citations.

If a school does not issue guidelines on formatting the abstract and keywords, one may source from among several hyperlinks from the web. One source presents a step-by-step instruction in formatting based on the American Psychological Association or APA, as it is better known among students writing their research papers. The length of abstracts varies in universities here and abroad. Currently, the maximum sizes for abstracts submitted to Canada’s National Archive are 150 words for the thesis and 350 words for the doctoral dissertation. However, at Cornell University, the thesis should not exceed 600 words while the dissertation should not exceed 350 words. At England’s University of Exeter and at Scotland’s St. Andrews U, the Universities of Singapore, of Malaya, of the Philippines, at the Ateneo de Manila U and de La Salle U, the length of abstracts for either thesis or dissertation is from 300 to 350 words. (The hyperlinks on these universities for “length of theses/dissertations abstracts” are easily available on the web.)