An APA abstract is a brief, comprehensive summary of the contents of an article, research paper, dissertation, or report.
It is written in accordance with the guidelines of the American Psychological Association (APA), which is a widely used format in social and behavioral sciences.
An APA abstract summarizes, usually in one paragraph of between 150–250 words, the major aspects of a research paper or dissertation in a prescribed sequence that includes:
- The rationale: the overall purpose of the study, providing a clear context for the research undertaken.
- Information regarding the method and participants: including materials/instruments, design, procedure, and data analysis.
- Main findings or trends: effectively highlighting the key outcomes of the hypotheses.
- Interpretations and conclusion(s): solidify the implications of the research.
- Keywords related to the study: three to five terms that assist the paper’s discoverability in academic databases.
The abstract should stand alone, be “self-contained,” and make sense to the reader in isolation from the main article.
The purpose of the abstract is to give the reader a quick overview of the essential information before reading the entire article. The abstract is placed on its own page, directly after the title page and before the main body of the paper.
The abstract appears as the very first part of your paper. Even so, write it last: draft it only after finishing your full paper, once you know exactly what you are summarizing.
Note: This page reflects the latest version of the APA Publication Manual (i.e., APA 7), released in October 2019.
Structure of the Abstract
[NOTE: DO NOT separate the components of the abstract – it should be written as a single paragraph. This section is separated to illustrate the abstract’s structure.]
1) The Rationale
One or two sentences describing the overall purpose of the study and the research problem(s) you investigated. You are basically justifying why this study was conducted.
- What is the importance of the research?
- Why would a reader be interested in the larger work?
- For example, are you filling a gap in previous research or applying new methods to take a fresh look at existing ideas or data?
Examples
- Women who are diagnosed with breast cancer can experience an array of psychosocial difficulties; however, social support, particularly from a spouse, has been shown to have a protective function during this time. This study examined the ways in which a woman’s daily mood, pain, and fatigue, and her spouse’s marital satisfaction predict the woman’s report of partner support in the context of breast cancer.
- The current nursing shortage, high hospital nurse job dissatisfaction, and reports of uneven quality of hospital care are not uniquely American phenomena.
- Students with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) are more likely to exhibit behavioral difficulties than their typically developing peers. The aim of this study was to identify specific risk factors that influence variability in behavior difficulties among individuals with SEND.
2) The Method
Information regarding the participants (number, and population). One or two sentences outlining the method, explaining what was done and how. The method is described in the present tense.
Name the study’s design, such as an experiment, correlational study, randomised controlled trial, survey, or meta-analysis. State the materials or measures you used and summarise the essential procedure. For an experiment, name its independent and dependent variables.
Give enough detail that a reader can judge the study’s scope and rigour, but resist turning the abstract into a methods section in miniature.
Examples
- Pretest data from a larger intervention study and multilevel modeling were used to examine the effects of women’s daily mood, pain, and fatigue and average levels of mood, pain, and fatigue on women’s report of social support received from her partner, as well as how the effects of mood interacted with partners’ marital satisfaction.
- This paper presents reports from 43,000 nurses from more than 700 hospitals in the United States, Canada, England, Scotland, and Germany in 1998–1999.
- The study sample comprised 4,228 students with SEND, aged 5–15, drawn from 305 primary and secondary schools across England. Explanatory variables were measured at the individual and school levels at baseline, along with a teacher-reported measure of behavior difficulties (assessed at baseline and the 18-month follow-up).
3) The Results
One or two sentences indicating the main findings or trends found as a result of your analysis. The results are described in the present or past tense.
Quantify the finding rather than writing a vague phrase such as “results are discussed.” State the direction and size of the main effect, with the key statistic behind it, so a reader can judge the finding for themselves.
Report your primary outcome honestly, even when it was not statistically significant. Overstating a null result is called spin. One review found spin in 37.5% of abstract results sections and 58.3% of conclusions (Boutron et al., 2010).
Examples
- Results show that on days in which women reported higher levels of negative or positive mood, as well as on days they reported more pain and fatigue, they reported receiving more support. Women who, on average, reported higher levels of positive mood tended to report receiving more support than those who, on average, reported lower positive mood. However, average levels of negative mood were not associated with support. Higher average levels of fatigue but not pain were associated with higher support. Finally, women whose husbands reported higher levels of marital satisfaction reported receiving more partner support, but husbands’ marital satisfaction did not moderate the effect of women’s mood on support.
- Nurses in countries with distinctly different healthcare systems report similar shortcomings in their work environments and the quality of hospital care. While the competence of and relation between nurses and physicians appear satisfactory, core problems in work design and workforce management threaten the provision of care.
- Hierarchical linear modeling of data revealed that differences between schools accounted for between 13% (secondary) and 15.4% (primary) of the total variance in the development of students’ behavior difficulties, with the remainder attributable to individual differences. Statistically significant risk markers for these problems across both phases of education were being male, eligibility for free school meals, being identified as a bully, and lower academic achievement. Additional risk markers specific to each phase of education at the individual and school levels are also acknowledged.
4) The Conclusion / Implications
A brief summary of your conclusions and implications of the results, described in the present tense. Explain the results and why the study is important to the reader.
Keep the conclusion tied to what your results actually showed. A conclusion that reaches further than the data is the clearest sign of spin. That is the part of the abstract most likely to mislead a reader who stops there.
This matters beyond the paper itself. Spin is not confined to trials: a wide-ranging review found the same pattern of overstated conclusions across clinical trials, observational studies, and systematic reviews (Chiu et al., 2017).
- For example, what changes should be implemented as a result of the findings of the work?
- How does this work add to the body of knowledge on the topic?
Examples
Implications of these findings are discussed relative to assisting couples during this difficult time in their lives.
- Resolving these issues, which are amenable to managerial intervention, is essential to preserving patient safety and care of consistently high quality.
- Behavior difficulties are affected by risks across multiple ecological levels.
Addressing any one of these potential influences is therefore likely to contribute to the reduction in the problems displayed.
The above examples of abstracts are from the following papers:
Aiken, L. H., Clarke, S. P., Sloane, D. M., Sochalski, J. A., Busse, R., Clarke, H., … & Shamian, J. (2001). Nurses’ reports on hospital care in five countries . Health affairs, 20(3), 43-53.
Boeding, S. E., Pukay-Martin, N. D., Baucom, D. H., Porter, L. S., Kirby, J. S., Gremore, T. M., & Keefe, F. J. (2014). Couples and breast cancer: Women’s mood and partners’ marital satisfaction predicting support perception . Journal of Family Psychology, 28(5), 675–683.
Oldfield, J., Humphrey, N., & Hebron, J. (2017). Risk factors in the development of behavior difficulties among students with special educational needs and disabilities: A multilevel analysis . British journal of educational psychology, 87(2), 146-169.
5) Keywords
APA style asks for a short list of keywords placed at the end of the abstract. Databases use these words to help other researchers find your work. Choose terms that reflect your study’s main topics. Here are some tips for choosing keywords:
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Core Concepts: Identify the most important ideas or concepts in your paper. These often include your main research topic, the methods you’ve used, or the theories you’re discussing.
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Specificity: Your keywords should be specific to your research. For example, suppose your paper is about the effects of climate change on bird migration patterns in a specific region. In that case, your keywords might include “climate change,” “bird migration,” and the region’s name.
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Consistency with Paper: Make sure your keywords are consistent with the terms you’ve used in your paper. For example, if you use the term “adolescent” rather than “teen” in your paper, choose “adolescent” as your keyword, not “teen.”
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Jargon and Acronyms: Avoid using too much-specialized jargon or acronyms in your keywords, as these might not be understood or used by all researchers in your field.
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Synonyms: Consider including synonyms of your keywords to capture as many relevant searches as possible. For example, if your paper discusses “post-traumatic stress disorder,” you might include “PTSD” as a keyword.
Remember, keywords are a tool for others to find your work, so think about what terms other researchers might use when searching for papers on your topic.
The Abstract SHOULD NOT contain:
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Lengthy background or contextual information: The abstract should focus on your research and findings, not general topic background.
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Undefined jargon, abbreviations, or acronyms: The abstract should be accessible to a wide audience, so avoid highly specialized terms without defining them.
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Citations: Abstracts typically do not include citations, as they summarize original research.
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Incomplete sentences or bulleted lists: The abstract should be a single, coherent paragraph written in complete sentences.
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New information not covered in the paper: The abstract should only summarize the paper’s content.
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Subjective comments or value judgments: Stick to objective descriptions of your research.
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Excessive details on methods or procedures: Keep descriptions of methods brief and focused on main steps.
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Speculative or inconclusive statements: The abstract should state the research’s clear findings, not hypotheses or possible interpretations.
- Any illustration, figure, table, or references to them. All visual aids, data, or extensive details should be included in the main body of your paper, not in the abstract.
- Elliptical or incomplete sentences should be avoided in an abstract. The use of ellipses (…), which could indicate incomplete thoughts or omitted text, is not appropriate in an abstract.
Types of Abstracts
Not every abstract works the same way. The kind you write depends on your paper’s purpose and its design.
Descriptive vs. Informative Abstracts
A descriptive abstract tells the reader what a paper covers, without giving the results. It works like a table of contents for reviews, theoretical papers, and other work that does not report a single result. It never states what the study actually found.
An informative abstract delivers the study’s substance, including its results and conclusion, so it can stand in for the paper. Nearly every empirical paper needs one. So does every APA-style abstract.
An abstract that only names a topic, with no finding, is inadequate for an empirical study, because it withholds the very thing a reader needs.
For example, an abstract that only says “the effects of sleep on memory are examined” is merely descriptive, not truly informative.
The difference matters for how a reader searches, too: only an informative abstract lets a database index the actual finding.
Conference Abstracts
A conference abstract is submitted months in advance, for review as a talk or poster. It is often published in the proceedings as the only public record of work that never reaches full publication.
Few readers ever see the full study.
Because it is judged competitively and read on its own, it must be unusually self-sufficient while staying accurate.
The pressure to make preliminary or incomplete work sound compelling makes this genre especially vulnerable to over-claiming. That is one reason reporting guidelines cover conference abstracts as well as full journal abstracts (Hopewell et al., 2008; Beller et al., 2013).
Make every word count. If you are submitting to a conference, treat every word as if it were the only thing a reviewer will ever read of your work.
Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis Abstracts
An abstract for a systematic review or meta-analysis has to summarise a synthesis of many studies, not just one.
It should name the eligibility criteria and databases searched. It should also report the number of studies and participants pooled. It should give the combined effect estimate with its confidence interval, and how much the underlying studies varied.
A dedicated reporting standard, PRISMA for Abstracts, lists exactly what such an abstract should contain (Beller et al., 2013).
This is not automatic.
A well-known danger here is that a review abstract can report a pooled result without flagging the publication bias, or the heterogeneity between studies, that undermines it.
Readers should look for both.
Clinicians and guideline-writers often rely on this abstract alone, which is exactly why the checklist exists.
Randomised Controlled Trial Abstracts
The abstract of a randomised controlled trial carries the highest stakes, because trial results feed directly into clinical and policy decisions.
CONSORT for Abstracts sets its own standard. It requires the trial design, participants, setting, and interventions to be reported. It must also state the pre-specified primary outcome, the numbers randomised and analysed, the effect estimate, and any harms (Hopewell et al., 2008).
Reporting the primary outcome honestly, including when it was not significant, guards against quietly shifting the abstract’s emphasis onto a secondary finding instead.
This happens often. Switching the emphasis to a secondary outcome that happened to be significant is the most common way this goes wrong.
The type matters. Whichever one applies to your paper, the core discipline stays the same: report only what you can support, and let the format fit the study.
APA Style for Abstracts
An APA abstract must be formatted as follows:
Include the running head aligned to the left at the top of the page (professional papers only) and page number. Note, student papers do not require a running head.
On the first line, center the heading “Abstract” and bold (do not underlined or italicize).
Do not indent the single abstract paragraph (which begins one line below the section title).
Double-space the text.
Use Times New Roman font in 12 pt.
Set one-inch (or 2.54 cm) margins.
If you include a “keywords” section at the end of the abstract, indent the first line and italicize the word “Keywords” while leaving the keywords themselves without any formatting.
Example APA Abstract Page
Further Information
How long should an APA abstract be?
An APA abstract should typically be between 150 to 250 words long. However, the exact length may vary depending on specific publication or assignment guidelines. It is crucial that it succinctly summarizes the essential elements of the work, including purpose, methods, findings, and conclusions.
Where does the abstract go in an APA paper?
In an APA formatted paper, the abstract is placed on its own page, directly after the title page and before the main body of the paper. It’s typically the second page of the document. It starts with the word “Abstract” (centered and not in bold) at the top of the page, followed by the text of the abstract itself.
What are the 4 C’s of abstract writing?
The 4 C’s of abstract writing are an approach to help you create a well-structured and informative abstract. They are:
Conciseness: An abstract should briefly summarize the key points of your study. Stick to the word limit (typically between 150-250 words for an APA abstract) and avoid unnecessary details.
Clarity: Your abstract should be easy to understand. Avoid jargon and complex sentences. Clearly explain the purpose, methods, results, and conclusions of your study.
Completeness: Even though it’s brief, the abstract should provide a complete overview of your study, including the purpose, methods, key findings, and your interpretation of the results.
Cohesion: The abstract should flow logically from one point to the next, maintaining a coherent narrative about your study. It’s not just a list of disjointed elements; it’s a brief story of your research from start to finish.
What is the abstract of a psychology paper?
An abstract in a psychology paper serves as a snapshot of the paper, allowing readers to quickly understand the purpose, methodology, results, and implications of the research without reading the entire paper. It is generally between 150-250 words long.
Key Takeaways
- Structure: An APA abstract packs the rationale, method, results, and conclusion into one paragraph of 150–250 words.
- Placement: It sits alone on its own page, right after the title page and before the main body.
- Format: The heading “Abstract” is centred and bold, the paragraph itself is not indented, and the text is double-spaced.
- Keywords: List three to five terms below the abstract using the same wording as your paper, so databases can find your work.
- No Citations: An abstract summarises your own study; it never cites outside sources or introduces new information.
- Report Honestly: State your actual findings, even null ones. A conclusion that outruns the data is the clearest sign of “spin.”
