Abstracts Are Not Enough! :-)

My last blog post listed the usual sections of a research report (title, abstract, introduction, methods, results, & discussion/conclusion); and I illustrated the amazing things you can learn from only an article title!

This week? Abstracts.   Abstracts are great; abstracts are not enough!

An abstract will not give you enough information to accurately apply the study findings to practice.  An abstract typically summarizes all the other sections of the article, such as  the question the researcher wanted to answer, how the researcher collected data to answer it, and what that data showed.  This is great when you are trying to get the general picture, but you should Never assume that the abstract tells you what you need to know.

Abstracts can mislead you IF you do not read the rest of the article.  They are only a short 100-200 words and so they have to leave out key information.   You may misunderstand study results if you read only the abstract.   An abstract's 33,000 foot level description of a study, cannot reveal the same things that can be revealed in the up-close & personal description of the full article.

So...what is the takeaway?  Definitely read the abstract to get the general idea.  Then read the article beginning to end.  Don't give up reading the full article just because some parts of the study may be hard to understand.  Just read and get what you can. Then try a re-read or get some help understanding any difficult sections.   This is an important step toward EBP.