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Are structured abstracts more or less accurate than traditional ones? A study in the psychological literature

Keele University, UK, j.hartley{at}psy.keele.ac.uk

Background: Recent studies of structured abstracts in medical journal articles have shown that they do not always reflect accurately the work that is reported in more detail in the subsequent text. It is not known, however, whether or not structured abstracts fare better or worse than traditional ones in this respect.

Aim: The aim of this study was to compare the accuracy of traditional and structured versions of the same abstracts prepared for publication in psychology journals.

Method: Thirty traditional abstracts - originally written to accompany articles submitted for publication in journals published by the British Psychological Society (BPS) - were compared with the 30 structured ones that the authors were required to submit when their papers had been later accepted for publication. The abstracts were examined to see whether or not they contained data that were inconsistent with the corresponding data in the subsequent articles.

Results: Few inaccuracies were found and there was no evidence that these structured abstracts fared any better or worse than the traditional abstracts in this respect. The structured abstracts contained more information and were, therefore, more informative, but they were no more inaccurate than the traditional ones. However, there were examples of what might be called ‘selective reporting’ in both types of abstract and both styles contained information that could have been provided more clearly.

Conclusions: This study suggests that there are few inaccuracies in abstracts published by the BPS and few differences between traditional and structured abstracts in this respect. The difference between these results and those obtained in the medical field most probably reflects the nature of the abstracts in these different disciplines.

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