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Abstract for conference without results

J

Goodmorning to all of you,

Next year May, my supervisor will be president of a conference and she would like me to submit an abstract with the goal to present it at the conference. However, I just started my PhD 7 months ago and I therefore have no real results yet. I will have results by May though.
I have been trying to write an abstract, but its really difficult, since I dont know what my results will be.
Any advice/tips or tricks?

Thank you! Cheers

C

I've submitted several abstracts like this, and have just said something like, 'the study is on-going and preliminary results will be presented'. I prefer to leave it slightly vague so that if there's any delay with getting the results, I'm already covered :)

J

Thank you, Chickpea. Thank you for your input. I appreciate it :) The structure of the abstract has to be: Purpose, methodology, results and conclusion. Iam struggling about what to write at the conclusion part. Any thoughts?

C

As your supervisor asked you to submit an abstract I'd see what they suggest. I've seen people do things like writing "results will be discussed". I've also seen conferences that specify that this is not acceptable, so it appears to vary somewhat from conference to conference.

J

Thank you for your reply :)! I am still waiting for my reply from my supervisor, I hope she will be able to tell me more.

C

I agree about asking your supervisor for advice, if they want you to follow a particular structure. I've just presented a poster based on partial results, and used what would normally be the 'conclusion' part just to say more about how I proposed to use the results, where they would fit in within my field, etc. All the conferences I've been to have been happy with people presenting 'work in progress', but some have wanted it to be made clear on the abstract.

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