Abstract The Abstract should be about 250 words long. It should succinctly summarise the aim, background; design; sample; measures; results and statistical conclusions of your study. Write it in the past tense, and PLEASE avoid personal references like ‘I’. Your abstract should first state the aim of the study e.g., ‘In the light of Hogan (1978) the aim of this investigation was to investigate the effect of gender on perceived intelligence.’ You should then state the research hypothesis H1: ‘That gender has a significant effect on perceived intelligence,’ and whether or not this is one or two tailed hypothesis. (This is a two-tailed hypothesis. You are saying gender does have an effect on perceived intelligence, but not giving the direction of the expected effect.). Now tell the reader your method by saying, as in this example, that this was an experiment using a repeated measures design. Identify the two conditions of your independent variable i.e. in condition A male and female participants were asked to judge their mothers IQ, while in condition B their fathers. You would state that to eliminate order effect, counterbalancing was used using the ABBA procedure. State how your sample was selected, number of participants, who they were, and where you got them. For example, ‘Using opportunity sampling XX participants, comprising XX males, and XX females aged 16 –18, were selected from S5 and S6 at Queen Margaret Academy, Ayr to participate in the study.' Say that your results were analysed using descriptive, and inferential statistics such as the t-test. Conclude your Abstract by stating your statistical conclusions, and say how these influenced results. To do this you would say what calculated t is, and if it is  (greater
than or equal to) the tabled (critical) value t for a
two-tailed test at the 0.05 level of significance chosen. Say what
this means i.e. if calculated t is ? tabled (critical) value
t, then you can reject your null hypothesis H0:
‘That gender does not have any effect on perceived
intelligence at the 0.05 level of significance.’ and thus
by counter
intuition accept your research or experimental hypothesis
H1: ‘That gender does have
a significant effect on perceived intelligence.’ Alternatively if in using the t test you find that calculated t is less than the critical value of t, you must say so, indicating what this means in the light of your hypotheses. This would be to say that calculated t being < (less than) critical t you accept the null hypothesis, and by counter intuition reject the experimental. Click on Student Interactive to see an example of an Abstract, or now go straight to an annotated Introduction regards our example of a study into gender and perceived intelligence. Click here to return to Contents |
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