“Informative key words in the title and abstract make manuscripts easier to find.”Lorna Ellis - Evidence Synthesiser
Summarise key elements of the study including:
background about the problem or phenomenon of interest
description of the study purpose or research question
methods, including the approach or perspective (e.g., general inductive, grounded theory), context (setting, time period), sample (number and key characteristics of participants, events, documents), data collection strategies (e g., observation, interview, focus group) and data analysis techniques
description of main findings (e.g., themes or inferences) related to the study purpose and/or research question
study implications
Information presented in the abstract should be consistent with the information presented in the full text.
Use the format of your intended journal.
Jump to:
Why readers need this information
A reader should be able to read the abstract independent of the manuscript and get a sense of the background, purpose, methods, main results and implications that will be described in greater detail in the manuscript.
Your abstract will be indexed by search tools so descriptive words will make it easier for others to discover.
Example
Purpose: Although academic centers rely on assessments from medical trainees regarding the effectiveness of their faculty as teachers, little is known about how trainees conceptualize and approach their role as assessors of their clinical supervisors
Method: In 2010, using a constructivist grounded theory approach, five focus group interviews were conducted with 19 residents from an internal medicine residency program. A constant comparative analysis of emergent themes was conducted.
Results: Residents viewed clinical teaching assessment (CTA) as a time-consuming task with little reward. They reported struggling throughout the academic year to meet their CTA obligations and described several shortcut strategies they used to reduce their burden. Rather than conceptualizing their assessments as a conduit for both formative and summative feedback, residents perceived CTA as useful for the surveillance of clinical supervisors at the extremes of the spectrum of teaching effectiveness. They put the most effort, including the crafting of written comments, into the CTAs of these outliers. Trainees desired greater transparency in the CTA process and were sceptical regarding the anonymity and perceived validity of their faculty appraisals.
Conclusions: Individual and system-based factors conspire to influence postgraduate medical trainees’ motivation for generating high-quality appraisals of clinical teaching. Academic centers need to address these factors if they want to maximize the usefulness of these assessments.