Dissertation abstract is an important part of an entire dissertation writing that provides readers with an idea about the content of the entire dissertation. An abstract is therefore a brief summary of the entire research work carried out throughout the course of writing the dissertation. While writing a dissertation abstract, it is important to take into consideration certain important points in order to make the abstract meaningful to the readers. However, the major problem with many students is not having a clear understanding of what needs to be covered in the abstract. Some of the basic mistakes done by students while writing dissertation abstract are discussed below. The discussion also includes the ways in which students can avoid such mistakes while writing abstract:

Mistake 1: Confused about abstract content: 

This is one of the major mistakes identified among the majority of the students when they start writing their dissertation abstract. An abstract is necessarily a summary of entire research work, but students often confuse it as merely a structure, and includes a discussion on what chapters are covered in the entire dissertation. An abstract is not supposed to explain the structure followed in writing the dissertation, but it should explain the content of each and every chapter in 2 to 3 sentences. It should include a brief background information followed by a summary of literature review, and the methods followed in collecting data. The finding from the study needs to be summarised and the implication from doing the study needs to be mentioned. The readers should be able to understand the entire research simply by reading the abstract.

Mistake 2: Ignoring key information in abstract:

As abstract is just the summary of a big research paper, it makes it crucial to include the most relevant information in the abstract content. But many students fail to include the relevant content and emphasizes more on content that is not highly relevant to the research findings. It is therefore important to consider the inclusion of the purpose of the research, and justification for doing the research, its linkage with the previous studies, the methodological approach followed, and the findings accomplished, and finally the implication thereof. However many students fail to include these important points and they over emphasise on certain other points which do not serve the main purpose of writing the abstract.

Mistake 3: Including new information in abstract: 

This is another important mistake identified among students when they seek to write their dissertation abstract. An abstract should not include any new information that is not covered in the research, rather it should provide a brief summary of each and every chapter included in the presentation. Since it is a summary of entire research work, the main content from each chapter needs to be covered in 1 to 2 sentences which provides readers with a brief understanding of each and every chapter included in the dissertation. Any new information will simply make the entire dissertation irrelevant, and the readers would not get the true picture of findings achieved in the dissertation.

Mistake 4: Writing too lengthy abstract: 

An abstract is a small piece of summary that is written with the purpose of providing complete information to the readers without requiring them to look at the complete research. The main reason why the readers turn to abstract is to get complete information about the research without spending too much time. It is therefore essential that the information within the abstract should be concise and complete, but many students fail to make it concise and include detailed information which ultimately makes the abstract too lengthy. As stated earlier, each major chapter should be summarized in one to two sentences so that the entire abstract can be completed in a page, to give valuable information to the readers.

Mistake 5: Ignoring grammatical mistakes and errors: 

Each and every section of the research is important and it is therefore essential to give importance to every chapter even though it is a smaller one. The major mistake that is identified among students is their low level attention towards abstract, and they do not consider it necessary to proofread it which led to so many grammatical and spelling errors. It is important to proofread each and every chapter of the research including the abstract so that the entire research provides relevant information to the reader.

All the above mistakes are quite evident among students and they should be avoided to make sure that the abstract reveals the correct information about the entire research.