Abstract Writing 101

We know that submitting an abstract for a conference can be confusing and stressful the first time. That’s why we created the following guidelines.

What should your abstract look like for paper and poster presentations?

This means that the abstract could be written as followed:

• Three to four sentences to contextualize the problematic.
  • What is the importance of the research?
  • Why is your research, argument important?
  • What practical, scientific, theoretical or artistic gap is your project filling?
  • Why would a reader be interested?
• Two or three sentences to summarize key theories/approaches that you will draw on
  • What theories does your work rely upon or include?
  • What are the important concepts that are considered in your work?
• Three to four sentences to present your methodology and objectives AND/OR the focus of your discussion
  • What did you actually do to obtain your results? (e.g., analyzed 3 novels, completed a cursory search of the literature, interviewed 17 students)
• Five or 6 sentences to present your findings or conclusions
  • What did you learn, invent, create from completing the above procedure?
  • What are the larger implications of your findings, especially for the problem, gap identified previously?
  • Why is this research valuable?
• A list of references in APA 7th edition

This year you will notice on the submission platform that abstracts have been separated by section to aid with the submission process and to ensure that all five elements listed above are included.

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Concrete example:

Objectives and/or research questions

Despite the growing number of studies conducted in intercultural environments, researchers tend to omit the translation process in their methodology. 

Conceptual/theoretical framework or model

However, literature shows that translation may greatly affect the validity of a study. Indeed, from a socio-constructivist point of view, all interpretations are subjective. Because a translation is the translator’s interpretation of the meaning in the source language, the translator undoubtedly influences the outcome of the analysis conducted on the verbatim translation. For this reason, we believe that the translation process and some information on the translator’s qualifications should be mentioned in the methodology. (rationale)

Methodology/procedure

In this presentation, we start by giving an overview of the history of translation in Canada, followed by a description of practical and epistemological implications of translating qualitative data. We then address the translator’s competence and common sources of mistakes. Finally, we present and examine three translations from Spanish into French of qualitative data on language representations made by three translators with completely different profiles. We describe the main differences and explain how they might have been affected by the translators’ background and how they might influence the results of the study. 

Findings or conclusions

The results show that the translators’ language variation and training, among others, might influence the translation quality, and consequently, its validity.

Workshops and Professional Development Sessions

For workshops or professional development sessions the format is a little different. We ask that you provide the following information:

• Topic and session objectives
• Session outline
• Value for graduate students/researchers
• References