Writing A Brilliant Doctoral Dissertation Abstract: Useful Advice

An abstract is a summarized version of a paper. It serves to highlight the key points that are covered in the paper. It also provides a concise description of the scope and content of the paper. An abstract often provides the reader with an opportunity to quickly view the major contents and methods of a paper. Writing a brilliant doctoral dissertation abstract is important because it enables the reader to decide whether the paper is interesting. You can follow these six points in order to come up with a brilliant dissertation abstract.

1. Introduction

In one sentence, introduce the topic. You should phrase it in such a way that the reader will directly understand your topic. Since the examiners are already familiar with the broad field of the research, you need to specifically tell them the topic that your research addresses.

2. Problem Statement

Clearly stating the main research question or research problem is crucial in writing a brilliant doctoral dissertation abstract. You need to state the problem and the main research problem in a single sentence. You should build on the first sentence that introduced the topic to focus on the key problem within the topic. The ability to summarize your paper in a single key problem statement demonstrates a deep understanding of what you are attempting to write about.

3. State what has not been adequately addressed in the problem by other researchers

For a doctoral dissertation, you will have a whole chapter that covers what has been achieved previously in the literature review. Here you need to narrow it down to a single sentence. However, the point is not to attempt to cover all the different attempts that have failed. The point is to explain that a specific approach exists but nobody has ever attempted to use it.

4. Explain how you Solved the Problem

In a single sentence, you should explain your big idea. You should present the new perspective or approach that you have decided to adopt in order to tackle the research problem. The statement should be able to present your general view on the problem you introduced in the second step.

5. Explain how you conducted your research

One of the most critical elements of writing a brilliant doctoral dissertation abstract is explaining your research methodology. In a single sentence, you should state whether you run some experiments, conducted some case studies, conducted surveys, or developed software. The sentence is bound to be the longest in the abstract, but you need to avoid making it excessively long.

6. The Impact or Significance of your Research

Here, you don’t need to state the outcomes of the research. What you need to do is to summarize the implications of the study and its impact on research.