PhD Dissertation Abstracts
Tips on Writing PhD Dissertation Abstracts
Think of dissertation abstracts as a movie trailer. A movie trailer runs only for a few minutes and shows you the gist and the highlights of the 2 to 2 ½ hour full movie. In those few minutes, you’ll instantly know if the movie will be good or not. It is meant to entice you to watch the whole movie.
Most doctoral dissertations run for more than 100 pages long. For the panel, the abstract is the first things that they will read. One reading of the abstract will give them an idea whether your dissertation is good or not. It will be published and other researchers in the future will find it in the library. The abstract will help them see if your dissertation contains the information they need.
Those are important things that you need to know about dissertation abstracts. They are a mini-version of your whole dissertation. You need to write it in no more than 2 pages. In those 1 or 2 pages, you have to cover the following:
• What is the thesis of your dissertation?
• What is the aim of your dissertation?
• What is your dissertation methodology?
• What have you discovered from your research?
How are you going to extract or abstract the information above from your 100+ pages dissertation?
You have been working for your PhD dissertation for months now. By the time you get to writing your abstract, you’ve known your dissertation by heart already. You know what it is about and you know its main points. Take away your dissertation and summarize it off the top of your head. It will be a very rough draft of your abstract, but this is a good start.
When you have the rough draft of your abstract, go back to you thesis statement. Re-read your methodology. Take a look at the headings and the sub-headings of your dissertation. Re-read your introduction and conclusion. These will give you dissertation ideas on how to improve the draft of your abstract.
Look at the language of your abstract. Focus on the wordiness. Condense 2 to 3 sentences into one sentence. Dissertation abstracts should be concise. Make sure that in few paragraphs, you have covered all the important points of your dissertation. Also, the tone of your abstract should be the same tone as the rest of the dissertation.
Now that you are finished with your whole dissertation and are about to write the abstract for it, it should not be hard. It should be the easiest because you are done with the whole dissertation already. The only thing that you need is to extract the most important things. Dissertation abstracts should not cause a lot of stress. Just always remember the movie trailer.
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