After the title, the abstract is the next important part of your article that your social science audience will read. In this post, we explain how to write an abstract for an empirical article in the social sciences, with examples. By empirical article, we mean articles in which data analysis is a main feature.
Abstracts, like titles, must have the main concepts. Thankfully, for empirical research articles in the social sciences (sociology, political science, and psychology) there is a standard structure. Note that journals may differ in length — some want 100 words, some 200 words, and so on — and some impose a structure (e.g. Social Science Quarterly demands a specific structure).
Useful abstracts have a problem-solution approach
I. Knowledge gap: What is the problem/ topic; what do we know and what do we not know? (1-2 sentences)
II. Data and methods: How did you address the problem? (1-2 sentences)
III. Results (3-4 sentences)
IV. General contribution of the article to the field (1 sentence)
Examples of good abstracts
Example 1: Qualitative
Let’s start with a qualitative article.
Cordner, Alissa. “Staring at the sun during wildfire season: knowledge, uncertainty, and front-line resistance in disaster preparation.” Qualitative sociology 44, no. 2 (2021): 313-335.
I. Knowledge gap
“As climate change increases the frequency and severity of disasters, and population and social changes raise the public’s vulnerability to disaster events, societies face additional risk of multiple disaster events or other hazards occurring simultaneously. Such hazards involve significant uncertainty, which must be translated into concrete plans able to be implemented by disaster workers. Little research has explored how disaster managers incorporate different forms of knowledge and uncertainty into preparations for simultaneous hazards or disaster events, or how front-line disaster workers respond to and implement these plans.
The author begins with a general statement about disasters and public risks. Then, Dr. Cordner presents a knowledge gap: what we know about how disaster workers prepare for the uncertainty of hazards, and then what we do not know about it.
II. Data and methods
“In this paper I draw on ethnographic research working as a wildland firefighter, interviews with firefighters and fire managers, and state and agency planning documents to examine preparations for two events occurring in Central Oregon in August 2017: (1) the height of wildfire season and (2) hundreds of thousands of anticipated visitors for a total solar eclipse.”
As expected in a classic social science abstract, the next sentences are about the data and methods. We hope that the next part of the abstract will address the findings.
III. Results
“I find that different qualities of risk, hazard, and uncertainty across these two events were central to the development and implementation of disaster plans. Agency leaders devised worst-case scenario plans for the eclipse based on uncertain predictions regarding hazards from the eclipse and the occurrence of severe wildfires, aiming to eliminate the potential for unknown hazards. These plans were generally met with skepticism by front-line disaster workers. Despite the uncertainties that dominated eclipse-planning rhetoric, firefighters largely identified risks from the eclipse that were risks they dealt with in their daily work as firefighters.”
Indeed, Dr. Cordner does proceed with the findings. The final sentence should have a statement about the contribution.
IV. Contribution
“I conclude by discussing implications of these findings for conceptual understandings of disaster planning as well as contemporary concerns about skepticism and conspiracy theories directed at government planning and response to disaster events.”
The abstract indeed ends with a statement about the contribution of the work to the social sciences. Great job!
Example 2: Quantitative
Let’s look at a quantitative article.
Jungkunz, Sebastian, and Paul Marx. “Material deprivation in childhood and unequal political socialization: the relationship between children’s economic hardship and future voting.” European Sociological Review 40, no. 1 (2024): 72-84.
I. Knowledge gap
“Long-term socialization patterns are considered a key explanation for socio-economic inequalities in political participation. Material conditions in youth and childhood are assumed to contribute to rather stable trajectories of political apathy or involvement and lay the foundations for unequal participation from before voting age and far into adulthood. However, our understanding of when such inequalities begin to become noticeable, the importance of parental socio-economic status as opposed to personal socio-economic status, and potential long-term consequences is still limited.”
The authors begin with a statement about what we know, and what we don’t know, about inequality, socialization, and political participation.
II. Data and methods
“We address these issues using the youth questionnaire of the UK Household Longitudinal Study.”
Next, the authors present the data. Not much info here, but they use a well-known dataset and thus can get away with a minimal presentation of data and methods.
III. Results
“We show that material deprivation in childhood is negatively related to turnout in young adults’ first election in which they are eligible to vote. This result holds when we control for an unusually exhaustive list of potential confounders, such as psychological childhood characteristics, parental–political interest and education, present material conditions, mental health, and future educational degrees.”
A long results section, but thorough. The next section should be about the wider implications of their findings.
IV. Contribution
“Our results, hence, suggest that—while personal socio-economic experiences in early adulthood are not irrelevant—socio-economic family background has an independent effect on political participation.”
And voila, here the authors discuss the wider implications of their findings.
This is a classic abstract for quantitative research in the social sciences. Great job!
Summary
Abstracts have a particular structure. They start with the knowledge gap, move to the data and methods, then present the results, and end with the contribution to the literature. This abstract structure holds for qualitative and quantitative articles, for most journals in sociology and political science, and for many in psychology. Please keep in mind that journals will differ in terms of word or character count, and some demand a particular structure.
Joshua K. Dubrow is a PhD from The Ohio State University and a Professor of Sociology at the Polish Academy of Sciences.
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