Abstracts in the hard sciences and social sciences often put more emphasis on methods than

do abstracts in the humanities; humanities abstracts often spend much more time explaining
their objective than science abstracts do.
An abstract is a concise summary of a larger project (a thesis, research report, performance,
service project, etc.) that concisely describes the content and scope of the project and identifies
the projects objective, its methodology and its findings, conclusions, or intended results.

Remember that your abstract is a description of your project (what you specifically
are doing) and not a description of your topic (whatever youre doing the project on). It
is easy to get these two types of description confused. Since abstracts are generally
very short, its important that you dont get bogged down in a summary of the entire
background of your topic.

It should state the main objective and rationale of your project,

it should outline the methods you used to accomplish your objectives,

it should list your projects results or product (or projected or intended results or
product, if your project is not yet complete),

and it should draw conclusions about the implications of your project.

What is the problem or main issue? Why did you want to do this project in the first place?

What did you do?

This section of the abstract should explain how you went about solving the
problem or exploring the issue you identified as your main objective.
Reread/rewrite. Edit your abstract for content, flow, and readability.
Keep the abstract short, but be sure to include all major points that you want to get across. A general rule of thumb is
that the abstract is no longer than a page, and no longer than 10% the length of the full report...whichever is shorter.
As appropriate to your topic, include any or all of the following:
Why is this topic important -- what problem does it address.
What hypothesis is being examined.
What methods or approach are used to address the topic.
What are the key findings (particularly appropriate to a scientific paper).
What conclusions or discussions stem from the findings.

Avoid jargon. Jargon is the specialized, technical vocabulary that is used for
communicating within a specific field. Jargon is not effective for
communicating ideas to a broader, less specialized audience such as the
Undergraduate Symposium audience.

Discipline-specific sentence: Hostilities will be engaged with our adversary on

the coastal perimeter.
Revised for a more general audience: We will fight on the beaches.
Discipline-specific sentence: Geographical and cultural factors function to
spatially confine growth to specific regions for long periods of time.
Revised for a more general audience: Geographical and cultural factors limit
long-term economic growth to regions that are already prosperous.
Discipline-specific sentence: The implementation of statute-mandated
regulated inputs exceeds the conceptualization of the administrative
technicians.
Revised for a more general audience: The employees are having difficulty
mastering the new regulations required by the law.
(Examples excerpted from Lantham, Richard. Revising Prose; McCloskey,
Donald N. The Writing of Economics; and Scott, Gregory M. and Garrison,
Stephen M., The Political Science Student Writers Manual.)
Be concise. Dont use three words where you can communicate the same
idea in one. Dont repeat information or go into too much detail. Dont just cut
and paste sentences from your research paper into your abstract; writing that
is appropriate for long papers is often too complicated for abstracts. Read
more about general principles of writing clear, concise sentences.
Use short, direct sentences. Vary your sentence structure to avoid
choppiness. Read your abstract aloud, or ask someone else to read it aloud
to you, to see if the abstract is appropriately fluid or too choppy.
Use past tense when describing what you have already done.
how you will go about your study, who are your research participants, location

SAMPLE ABSTRACTS
Obesity in Biocultural Perspective
Stanley J. Ulijaszek and Hayley Lofink
Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford,
Oxford OX2 6PF, United Kingdom; email: [email protected],
[email protected]

Abstract
Obesity is new in human evolutionary history, having become possible at the population level with increased food
security. Across the past 60 years, social, economic, and technological changes have altered patterns of life almost

everywhere on Earth. In tandem,changes in diet and physical activity patterns have been central to the emergence of
obesity among many of the worlds populations,including the developing world. Increasing global rates of obesity
are broadly attributed to environments that are obesogenic, against an evolutionary heritage that is maladaptive in
these new contexts. Obesity has been studied using genetic, physiological, psychological,behavioral, cultural,
environmental, and economic frameworks. Although most obesity research is firmly embedded within disciplinary
boundaries, some convergence between genetics, physiology, and eating behavior has taken place recently. This
chapter reviews changing patterns and understandings of obesity from these diverse perspectives.

Wanting and Drug Use: A Biocultural Approach to the Analysis of Addiction

DANIEL H. LENDE

ABSTRACT
The integration of neurobiology into ethnographic research represents one fruitful way of doing biocultural research.
Based on animal research, incentive salience has been proposed as the proximate function of the mesolimbic
dopamine system, the main brain system implicated in drug abuse (Robinson and Berridge 2001). The research
presented here examines incentive salience as the mediator of the wanting and seeking seen in drug abuse. Based on
field work with adolescents at a school and a drug treatment center in Bogot a, Colombia, this article addresses: 1)
the development of a scale to measure the amount of incentive salience felt for drugs and drug use; 2) the results
from a risk-factor survey that examined the role of incentive salience and other risk factors in addiction; and 3) the
ethnographic results from in-depth interviews with Colombian adolescents examining dimensions of salience in the
reported experiences of drug use. Incentive salience proved to be a significant predictor of addicted status in logistic
regression analysis of data from 267 adolescents. Ethnographic results indicated that incentive salience applies both
to drug seeking and drug use, and confirmed the importance of wanting, a sense of engagement, and shifts in
attention as central dimensions of experiences related to drug use.

A Biocultural Approach to Breastfeeding Interactions in Central Africa

Hillary N. Fouts, Barry S. Hewlett, and Michael E. Lamb

ABSTRACT
Anthropologists have long recognized that breastfeeding involves much more than feeding; it entails intimate social
interactions between infants or children and their mothers. However, breastfeeding has predominantly been studied
with respect to structural features (frequency, timing) as well as nutritional and health aspects of infant feeding.
Thus, in this study we complement previous anthropological studies by examining social interactions that occur
during breastfeeding among the Aka and Bofi foragers and Ngandu and Bofi farmers at various ages (three to four
months, nine to ten months, toddlers). Further, we use an integrated biocultural perspective to explore how patterns
of breastfeeding and social interactions can be shaped by economic constraints, cultural values, and childrens
development. Overall, our findings illustrate how biological and cultural factors interact and provide useful
explanations of variations in breastfeeding structure and social interactions more so than either perspective alone.

Evolution of infectious Disease: A Biocultural Analysis of AIDS

GEORGE J. ARMELAGOS, MARY RYAN, AND THOMAS LEATHERMAN
Department of Anthropology, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida
Department of Anthropology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts
Department of Anthropology, Universitv of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina

ABSTRACT
The evolution of infectious disease can be understood from an ecological model that incorporates information from
anthropology, epidemiology, and biomedicine. This model considers variables such as the pathogen, the host
population, and the environment. In this model, the role that culture as well as other environmental variables plays in
the transmission of infectious disease in human populations is considered. In addition, the socio cultural response
and its impact on the disease process can be analyzed. The present AIDS epidemic is placed in an ecological and
evolutionary context of the disease in hominid evolution. The interaction between Human Immunodeficiency Virus

(HIV) and human populations is considered in this perspective. The ability of the virus to survive in semen and
blood both increases as well as limits the possibility of transmission. Cultural practices that increase the transmission
of blood and semen or increase sexual activity will obviously increase the potential risk of viral transmission. In
societies that practice exchange of blood, blood transfusion, and where vaccinations with unclean needles exist or
where there is intravenous (IV) drug use, the transmission of HIV by blood is enhanced. HIV which can cause a
breakdown of the immunological system is paradoxically a very fragile pathogen. Replication occurs within T-cells,
an important part of the immunological system. Outside of the blood or semen the virus dies quickly. From the
perspective of the pathogens adaptation, the virus has effectively solved the problem of survival. The fragile viruss
long incubation period and its ability to survive in the presence of antibodies help to assure its transmission. HWs
ability to suppress the immunological system may assure its immediate survival, but this adaptation may cause the
death of its host from other opportunistic pathogens that are usually not lethal.

Biocultural Aspects of Obesity in Young Mexican Schoolchildren

ALEXANDRA BREWIS*
Department of Anthropology, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia

ABSTRACT
Obesity related to over-nutrition is investigated in a sample of 219 Mexican children from affluent families, ages 6
12 years. Defined as weight-for-age at or above the 95th percentile, obesity rates in middle childhood are very high in
this population, being 24.2% of children (29.4% of boys and 19.1% of girls). Binary logistic regression shows that
children are more likely to be obese if they are boys, from small households with few or no other children, and have
more permissive, less authoritarian parents. Diet at school and activity patterns, including television viewing, are not
different for boys and girls and so do not explain this gender variation. The value placed on children, especially
sons, in smaller middle-class families, can result in indulgent feeding because food treats are a cultural index of
parental caring. Parents also value child fatness as a sign of health. These obese Mexican children have no greater
social problems (peer rejection or stigma) or psychological problems (anxiety, depression, or low self esteem) than
their non-obese peers. More study specifically focused on feeding practices in the home environment is required to
explain very high rates of child obesity. The differences in obesity risk related to specific aspects of childrens
developmental microniche emphasize the importance of including a focus on gender as a socio-ecological construct
in human biological studies of child growth, development, and nutrition.