Abstracts for Conference Presentation Proposals

What is an abstract?  

An abstract is a 100- to 300-word paragraph that provides readers with a quick overview of your essay or research and its organization. It should express your goal (or central idea), gaps in research, and your key findings; it should also suggest any implications or applications of the research you discuss in the paper. 

 

According to Carole Slade, an abstract is “a concise summary of the entire paper.” 

  • The function of an abstract is to describe, not to evaluate or defend, the paper. 
  • The abstract should begin with a brief but precise statement of the problem or issue, followed by a description of the research method and design, the major findings, and the implications. 
  • The abstract should contain the most important key words referring to method and content: these key words facilitate access to the abstract by computer search and enable a reader to decide whether to read the entire article.  

Note: Your abstract should read like an overview of your paper, not a proposal for what you intended to study or accomplish. Check with the criteria for the conference and, if possible, look at abstracts from previous years.

 

A conference will state a set of guidelines for anything beyond the basics. This will include format, their minimum and maximum word count, word choice, and even specific details to include in the content.

 

Note: The following are specifications for an abstract in APA style, used in the social sciences, such as psychology or anthropology. If you are in another discipline, check with your professor and the conference abstract’s submission guidelines about the format for the abstract. 

 

When an IMRaD paper or other presentable research is submitted to a conference, an abstract for the presentation will be submitted with it for the program. These abstracts are often the shortened version of the paper abstract; for example, an IMRaD abstract with max word count of 500 words will need to be shortened to fit a smaller max count, usually between 250-350 depending on the conference. Some conferences may also ask for a 100-word summary to supplement the abstract, as well. 

 

Use the paper as your basis for the abstract. You will need space for the Introduction and the Methods, the Results, and the implications of the research. The abstract should also be tailored to the conference audience; a conference open to non-researchers may have fewer audience members who understand the terminology of the field than a conference only for members of that academic field. 

 

Sample conference abstract: 

 

Purpose 

 




             Methods 

 

              

              

               Results 

 



Implications 

This study investigates the effectiveness of a one-hour linguistic diversity workshop designed to improve language ideologies; attitudes toward international teaching assistants (ITAs); and perceptions of ITAs’ language proficiency, accentedness, comprehensibility, and teaching quality. Participants completed pre- and postworkshop ratings of ITA speech, and results suggest that such a workshop can improve language ideologies and perceptions of accentedness and comprehensibility. Three other outcome variables – attitude, language proficiency, and teaching quality – were not significantly affected. But the positive effects on the perceived accentedness and comprehensibility of international English varieties appear to generalize beyond those varieties featured in the workshop. Some recommendations for interventions designed to improve cross-linguistic communication in the post-secondary classroom are given.

 

Try to avoid these common problems in conference abstracts: 

 

1.  The abstract leaves out results if the study is unfinished prior to submission: 

 

X  The results are inconclusive at this time. (What are the expected results for your study?) 

✔ Babies are expected to stare longer at the monitor when they hear sounds they are familiar with than when the sounds are unfamiliar. 

 

2.  The abstract includes too many statistical items: 

X  5 milliliters of water was heated to 210 degrees Celsius, and then poured into 20 grams of sand to see if water temperature affected its volume when mixed with a solid.

✔ Water was heated and then poured over sand to see if water temperature affected its volume when mixed with a solid. 

 

3.  The abstract is written in future tense (outside of anticipated results): 

 

X  This study will observe the migration pattern of birds between North and South America. (Has the paper not been started yet?) 

✔ The study observed the migration patterns of birds between North and South America.

 

4.  The abstract is vague about participants, if relevant:

 

X  The participants were asked to select between two items presented to them at the same time as they heard a high-pitched, ongoing tone.

✔ The participants (n = 104) were asked to select between two items presented to them at the same time as they heard a high-pitched, ongoing tone.

✔ 104 participants were asked to select between two items presented to them at the same time as they heard a high-pitched, ongoing tone.

 

Sources:

https://westernpsych.org/writing-a-conference-abstract/ 

Cooper, B., Payne, G., Hu, X., Dixon, Q., & Kuo, L. (2020). The impact of linguistic diversity education on L1 English speakers’ ideologies, attitudes, and perceptions of international teaching assistants. In O. Kang, S. Staples, K. Yaw, & K. Hirschi (Eds.), Proceedings of the 11th Pronunciation in Second Language Learning and Teaching conference, ISSN 2380-9566, Northern Arizona University, September 2019 (pp. 49–66). Ames, IA: Iowa State University.