How to Write an Abstract in Sociology: Definition, Types, Steps of the Process, and an Example

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by Nicki Lisa Cole, Ph.D., Thought.co: https://www.thoughtco.com/how-to-write-an-abstract-in-sociology-4126746

If you are a student learning sociology, chances are you will be asked to write an abstract. Sometimes, your teacher or professor may ask you to write an abstract at the beginning of the research process to help you organize your ideas for the research.

Other times, the organizers of a conference or editors of an academic journal or book will ask you to write one to serve as a summary of research you have completed and that you intend to share.

Let's review exactly what an abstract is and the five steps you need to follow in order to write one.

Definition of an Abstract

Within sociology, as with other sciences, an abstract is a brief and concise description of a research project that is typically in the range of 200 to 300 words. Sometimes you may be asked to write an abstract at the beginning of a research project and other times, you will be asked to do so after the research is completed.

In any case, the abstract serves, in effect, as a sales pitch for your research. Its goal is to pique the interest of the reader such that he or she continues to read the research report that follows the abstract, or decides to attend a research presentation you will give about the research. For this reason, an abstract should be written in clear and descriptive language, and should avoid the use of acronyms and jargon.

Types of Abstracts

Depending on at what stage in the research process you write your abstract, it will fall into one of two categories: descriptive or informative.

Those written before the research is completed will be descriptive in nature. Descriptive abstracts provide an overview of the purpose, goals, and proposed methods of your study, but do not include discussion of the results or conclusions you might draw from them. On the other hand, informative abstracts are super-condensed versions of a research paper that provide an overview of the motivations for the research, problem(s) it addresses, approach and methods, the results of the research, and your conclusions and implications of the research.

Before You Write an Abstract

Before you write an abstract there are a few important steps you should complete. First, if you are writing an informative abstract, you should write the full research report. It may be tempting to start by writing the abstract because it is short, but in reality, you can't write it until you the report is complete because the abstract should be a condensed version of it. If you've yet to write the report, you probably have not yet completed analyzing your data or thinking through the conclusions and implications. You can't write a research abstract until you've done these things.

Another important consideration is the length of the abstract. Whether you are submitting it for publication, to a conference, or to a teacher or professor for a class, you will have been given guidance on how many words the abstract can be. Know your word limit in advance and stick to it.

Finally, consider the audience for your abstract. In most cases, people you have never met will read your abstract. Some of them may not have the same expertise in sociology that you have, so it's important that you write your abstract in clear language and without jargon. Remember that your abstract is, in effect, a sales pitch for your research, and you want it to make people want to learn more.

The Five Steps of Writing an Abstract

1. Motivation. Begin your abstract by describing what motivated you to conduct the research. Ask yourself what made you pick this topic. Is there a particular social trend or phenomenon that sparked your interest in doing the project? Was there a gap in existing research that you sought to fill by conducting your own? Was there something, in particular, you set out to prove? Consider these questions and begin your abstract by briefly stating, in one or two sentences, the answers to them.
2. Problem. Next, describe the problem or question to which your research seeks to provide an answer or better understanding. Be specific and explain if this is a general problem or a specific one affecting only certain regions or sections of the population. You should finish describing the problem by stating your hypothesis, or what you expect to find after conducting your research.
3. Approach and methods. Following your description of the problem, you must next explain how your research approaches it, in terms of theoretical framing or general perspective, and which research methods you will use to do the research. Remember, this should be brief, jargon-free, and concise.
4. Results. Next, describe in one or two sentences the results of your research. If you completed a complex research project that led to several results that you discuss in the report, highlight only the most significant or noteworthy in the abstract. You should state whether or not you were able to answer your research questions, and if surprising results were found too. If, as in some cases, your results did not adequately answer your question(s), you should report that as well.
5. Conclusions. Finish your abstract by briefly stating what conclusions you draw from the results and what implications they might hold. Consider whether there are implications for the practices and policies of organizations and/or government bodies that are connected to your research, and whether your results suggest that further research should be done, and why. You should also point out whether the results of your research are generally and/or broadly applicable or whether they are descriptive in nature and focused on a particular case or limited population.

Example of an Abstract in Sociology

Let's take as an example the abstract that serves as the teaser for a journal article by sociologist Dr. David Pedulla. The article in question, published in American Sociological Review, is a report on how taking a job below one's skill level or doing part-time work can hurt a person's future career prospects in their chosen field or profession.  The abstract, printed below, is annotated with bolded numbers that show the steps in the process outlined above.

1. Millions of workers are employed in positions that deviate from the full-time, standard employment relationship or work in jobs that are mismatched with their skills, education, or experience. 2. Yet, little is known about how employers evaluate workers who have experienced these employment arrangements, limiting our knowledge about how part-time work, temporary agency employment, and skills underutilization affect workers' labor market opportunities. 3. Drawing on original field and survey experiment data, I examine three questions: (1) What are the consequences of having a nonstandard or mismatched employment history for workers' labor market opportunities? (2) Are the effects of nonstandard or mismatched employment histories different for men and women? and (3) What are the mechanisms linking nonstandard or mismatched employment histories to labor market outcomes? 4. The field experiment shows that skills underutilization is as scarring for workers as a year of unemployment, but that there are limited penalties for workers with histories of temporary agency employment. Additionally, although men are penalized for part-time employment histories, women face no penalty for part-time work. The survey experiment reveals that employers' perceptions of workers' competence and commitment mediate these effects. 5. These findings shed light on the consequences of changing employment relations for the distribution of labor market opportunities in the "new economy."

It's really that simple.

The Pace of Academic Life is Not the Problem, the Lack of Autonomy Is

by Carl Heyerdahl

by Alison Edwards, LSE Impact Blog: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2017/04/03/the-pace-of-academic-life-is-not-the-problem-the-lack-of-autonomy-is/ 

To many disgruntled with the quantification of scholarship, its impossible demands and meaningless metrics, it is the heightened pace of academic life that is the problem. 

For Alison Edwards, the crux of the problem is actually a lack of autonomy. Is it time for academics to take back control? This post is inspired in part by the Impact Blog’s Accelerated Academy series. 

If you work as an academic, chances are you were the smart kid in school. You always liked learning. It’s like being a fish in water, being an overachiever. You get off on performing. I hear you; I get it. Because me too.

But like many, I’m disturbed by the developments in the academy today. The quantification of scholarship, with its impossible demands and meaningless metrics, is creating perverse incentives and a toxic atmosphere. The situation has been aptly described as “heating up the floor to see who can keep hopping the longest”.

Slow Academia has been proposed as a solution. But as a response to Neoliberal U, it is not yet fully thought out. It’s not clear that the pace of academic life is the issue here. More likely, the crux of the problem is a lack of autonomy - in which case a more felicitous call to action would be not necessarily to slow down, but (to reclaim the catchphrase of the Brexiteers) to take back control. 

Slow Academia 

It’s hard to argue with the ideas behind Slow Academia, as expressed in manifestos and movements like Slow Scholarship, Slow Science and the Slow University. To put the brakes on now and then. To let ideas brew. To “focus upon a more reflective way of being, doing and living connected to addressing … issues of well-being, the common good, connection and community”, as Maggie O’Neill puts it. Who could dispute the appeal? But Slow Academia has its critics too. In particular, it seems to have a troubled relationship with time. 

Pace is not the problem 

The focus on slow suggests the issue is specifically the frantic speed of developments in academia. But that’s not the whole story. Here’s the Slow Science Manifesto:

“Don’t get us wrong - we do say yes to the accelerated science of the early 21st century. We say yes to the constant flow of peer-review journal publications and their impact; we say yes to science blogs and media and PR necessities … however, we maintain that this cannot be all. Science needs time to think.”

It’s not about doing everything more slowly, then, but about having the space to focus on what’s important. Like thinking, rather than being slaves to the metrics machine or tethered to our email accounts (“I’m a professor of philosophy, not a cardiac surgeon”, writes Brian Treanor in the Slow University Manifesto. “How urgent can it be?”).

Filip Vostal advocates “unhasty” rather than slow scholarship, and points out that speed is not all bad. Rather, modernity has always been characterised by an inherent “will to accelerate”:

“Speed has often been chosen, desired, appreciated - either as an instrument or as a goal in its own right … [t]he commitment to speed…remains a powerful motivational force even today; a force profoundly entrenched in the modern individual’s calculating and strategising mindset.”

It’s not about being “sluggish turtles”, he continues. What academics want is “something akin to scholarly time autonomy, enabling them to determine how temporal resources should be used”. 

Autonomous academia 

So control is the crux of the matter, and it’s here that the politics of slow have been accused of being not radical enough. Rather than challenging the very nature of capitalist knowledge production and consumption, Slow Academia just asks for more time to deal with it. Or as Heather Mendick puts it:

“Slowing down is mainly a way to be a more efficient and effective scholar, with slow scholarship directed towards the same aims as fast scholarship but offering a better way of getting there. But … shouldn’t we be seeking to challenge the goals as well as the means of academic life? And more broadly shouldn’t slow disrupt rather than reproduce the dominant definition of progress?”

Yet for better or worse, it is productivity as defined by the establishment that drives many scholars. We might object to the rules, but can’t help playing the game anyway. We are hypocrites, achievement fiends, “addicted to the brand” of big-name journals.

The point is about choice. In asking “is slow what the Slow University’s about?” Luke Martell says: “the issue isn’t balance, but control over the balance. Lots of things grouped under slow are about quality of life … but the key is autonomy and the ability to reclaim our lives for ourselves.” 

Taking back control

Martell goes on to propose some solutions: “one is individual withdrawal from paid employment, going part-time, self-employed or freelance. Some who do this still have lots of work and a life of speed. But because they’re freer from institutional employment they feel liberated.”

This is the route I’ve taken. I did my PhD at Cambridge, where my thesis was accepted with the rare result of no corrections. I like to think I’m not lacking in the ability and ambition departments. But the establishment route, I began to notice, didn’t sit well with me. I spent large chunks of time writing applications for grants I had next to no chance of getting, a futile process made worse by how dodgy it felt. Where is the sense in using an ultimately taxpayer-funded position to write proposals in the hopes of landing yet more taxpayer money? (see Jan Blommaert for more on this).

On graduating, I was strongly encouraged to apply for a post in Germany just as I was preparing to move to the Netherlands with my new husband, who had landed a postdoc there. “If you caught the overnight train from Amsterdam every Sunday”, he said brightly, “you’d be right on time to teach at 9am Mondays”.

The prospect didn’t sound appealing. So I bit the bullet and went out on my own as a part-time, independent scholar, funding my research through freelance editing and translation. In a broad sense, I embrace the ethics of slow. Free of the tyranny of the tenure track, I have the luxury of investing in new knowledge. I’ll take a sidestep into an adjacent field rather than salami slicing yet another paper out of work I’ve already done to death. I’ll attend a conference I’m intrigued by even if I’m not presenting at it.

But that’s not to say I work slow. I don’t want to work fewer hours or be less productive. I see myself in Mark Carrigan’s admission: “I’m aware that I like speed … time-pressure can be a symbol of status and flaunting it can represent one of the few socially acceptable forms of conspicuous self-aggrandisement available.” I may not have external targets, but I can’t get enough of imposing them on myself. There are papers in the pipeline, collaborative projects, a second book in progress, a blog and a small business. Oh, and I’m about to have a child.

Removing myself from the establishment route doesn’t diminish that drive. I expect the personal compulsion to do more, to achieve more, to produce more will always be there. It runs deep. But it’s on my own terms. 

Featured image credit: Control by Robert Couse-Baker (licensed under a CC BY 2.0 license).

Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Impact Blog, nor of the London School of Economics. Please review our comments policy if you have any concerns on posting a comment below. 

About the author 

Alison Edwards (PhD Cantab) is based in Amsterdam, where she works as a writer, translator, editor and independent scholar. Her latest research focuses on English in continental Europe and its role in local identity construction. She is the author of English in the Netherlands: Functions, Forms and Attitudes (John Benjamins 2016). She also blogs at www.theroguelinguist.com/blog. Follow her on Facebook or Twitter.