Writing Abstracts

Social Science (Sociology)

Thesis Title: Understanding Macro Developments in Environmental Public Opinion

This thesis examines macro developments in environmental public opinion to not only discern the patterns and driving factors of these changes, but to also investigate the potential consequences of such. Given the lack of climate opinion data, it first examines existing temporal measures of cross-national climate concern, and how well these align across survey organisations. As the attention given to the environment by the public has fluctuated over time, a British-focused investigation then examines how monthly changes in public salience between 2006-2019 may be linked to agenda-setting forces including media coverage, parliamentary debate, environmental protest, as well as other exogenous factors. Considering the surge in green party support in the 2021 German elections, this theoretical approach is then extended to examine changing green support in Germany between 1994-2019.  

Findings show that cross-national metrics of climate opinion do not always align, highlighting issues with relying on a single survey to establish cross-national differences. They also indicate that the global public have become more climate conscious, that is they increasingly recognise the seriousness of climate change as a problem, with this now at its highest ever level. Both British and German analyses find that protest activity is important in understanding environmental public opinion dynamics; protest can be predicted by public attention levels, but in turn, is successful in increasing broader environmental salience. The British analysis additionally suggests media coverage moves in response to public attention rather than the reciprocal, and that public attention may drop following heightened political attention. Relatedly, in Germany media is also not predictive of green support. Levels of public attention to the environment were previously predictive of changes in party support, however, this is no longer the case. Instead, monthly changes in the perceived importance of the environment to the public are occurring after changes in green support. These findings provide important insight into shifting opinion on a global phenomenon with geopolitical significance.  

Analysis

This Social Science example covers a number of the moves in the correct order from the list presented before (e.g. purpose, method, findings, conclusions, implications). The abstract is presented in a two paragraph structure: the first paragraph broadly covers the work carried out (including the purpose of the study and method), and the second paragraph considers the outcomes (including the findings, conclusions and implications). There is no one way to structure an abstract from a paragraph standpoint; some writers opt for one very long paragraph, while others break it into a number of small paragraphs. The two paragraph structure utilised here is logical and coherent, and is used to good effect. It also allows the student to go into sufficient detail, whilst keeping the abstract within that ideal one page limit.

Humanities

The social criticism of T.S. Eliot: Conservative, Classicist, Catholic, and European

This DPhil Thesis provides the first systematic and academic study of T.S. Eliot’s social criticism since the publication ofRoger Kojecký’s 1972 landmark study, T.S. Eliot’s Social Criticism. It provides a comprehensive portrait of T.S. Eliot as a social critic, connecting the political, social, cultural, and religious strains of his thought, while accurately placing him as a thinker within his political, social, cultural, and religious contexts. It challenges many of the prevailing scholarly representations of his work: namely the over- identification of his social criticism with his later or ‘mature’ works (such as The Idea of a Christianity Society and Notes Towards the Definition ofCulture) and the misidentification of them as the direct product of his participation in The Moot discussion group. By contrast, this thesis relocates the primary nexus of Eliot’s social criticism within the influential period of his Criterion editorship, and constructs alternative classifications, chronologies, and genealogies regarding his content and influences. This thesis also disproves many of the false claims and insinuations made about his work, such as its supposedly anti-Semitic and anti-democratic tendencies. What emerges from our comprehensive review is a social criticism animated and dominated by Catholic social thought, conservative anti-statism (tied to a tory respect for ‘Church and state’), classicist-inspired moral and literary standards, and a Eurocentric concern for the cultural and political inheritance of Christendom. To that end the thesis is divided into three chapters with the first providing a biographical study of Eliot as a social critic; the second examining the content of his social criticism during the Criterion period; and the last clarifying the relationship between his later works and The Moot discussion group.

Analysis

As with most Humanities abstracts, this is presented in one paragraph and is fairly succinct (not exceeding one page double spaced). Humanities abstracts often begin with a detailed discussion of the aims or arguments driving the study. In this example, we see that the summary of primary arguments utilises positive evaluative language throughout (e.g. provides, challenges etc.), giving the sense that the outline of arguments and the contributions is one and the same. The abstract concludes with a more detailed discussion of its contribution ("What emerges from this comprehensive review..."), which is conventional, and finally an outline of sections, which is not as conventional but employed to good effect here.

MSD

Characterising early human lympho-myeloid haematopoietic progenitors and their relationship with acute myeloid leukaemia stem cells

Haematopoiesis is a quintessential cellular hierarchy, with the haematopoietic stem cell having the ability to produce all blood cells. Downstream of the stem cell are multiple progenitor populations with increasing lineage-restriction. However, our knowledge of the progenitors that produce the lymphoid and myeloid lineages remains incomplete. Furthermore, in acute myeloid leukaemia there is a differentiation arrest at the lympho-myeloid progenitor stage, with the development of a progenitor-like leukaemia stem cells. A thorough comparison of the progenitor-like leukaemia stem cell with normal stem and progenitor cells is yet to be completed.

Presented here is a comprehensive study of the lympho-myeloid progenitors in both normal and leukaemic haematopoiesis. Firstly, the normal lympho-myeloid progenitors were fully characterised, both functionally and transcriptionally. Extensive single-cell analysis allowed the heterogeneity and continuum underlying lympho-myeloid differentiation to be uncovered. Although the majority of single-cells generated only one mature lineage, rare multi-lineage single-cells were detected.

The lympho-myeloid progenitors were then studied in acute myeloid leukaemia. It was demonstrated that there is often an expansion of the lympho-myeloid progenitors, which develop leukaemia-propagating ability. Transcriptionally, it was seen that the leukaemia stem cells displayed dysregulated expression profiles, whilst retaining some resemblance to the normal progenitors. A set of genes upregulated in the leukaemia stem cell was identified, and it was proposed that six of these genes may play a role in leukaemogenesis.

Studying both normal and leukaemic haematopoiesis is essential in advancing the treatment of acute myeloid leukaemia. Firstly, a more thorough understanding of the process of normal lympho-myeloid differentiation may aid the development of differentiation therapies. Secondly, by identifying functionally relevant markers of the leukaemia stem cell, treatments targeting the apex of the leukaemic hierarchy may be developed. And through the eradication of the leukaemia stem cell, we may truly eliminate the leukaemic disease.

Analysis

This MSD example has structured the abstract in four parts. The first paragraph gives an overview of the subject area while dwelling on the research problem the study looks to resolve. As it was an experimental based study, the second and third paragraphs summarise the methods and results. Unlike some MSD abstracts, this student does an excellent job in the fourth paragraph setting out the contribution and applicability of the study, by including positive evaluative language at several points (e.g. "more thorough understanding [...] may aid, "identifying functionally relevant markers" etc.).

MPLS (Mathematical Institute)

Thesis Title: Data-driven Methods for Simulation and Forecasting of Financial Time Series

This thesis develops data-driven methods for the simulation and forecasting of financial time series. The contributions are structured into four main components. In the first part, we propose Tail-GAN, a novel nonparametric approach that combines a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) with the joint elicitability property of Value-at-Risk (VaR) and Expected Shortfall (ES) for learning to simulate price scenarios that preserve tail risk features for a set of benchmark trading strategies.

In the second part, we investigate the impact of order flow imbalance (OFI) on price movements in equity markets in a multi-asset setting.  Our results show that, once the information from multiple levels is integrated into the OFI, multi-asset models with cross-impact do not provide additional explanatory power for contemporaneous impact compared to a sparse model without the cross-impact terms.  We show however that cross-asset OFIs do improve the forecasting of future returns.

In the third part, we apply machine learning models to forecast intraday realized volatility (RV), by exploiting commonality in intraday volatility by pooling stocks together, and by incorporating a proxy for market volatility. Neural networks dominate linear regression and tree-based models in terms of performance, and remain robust and competitive on unseen stocks not included in the training set, thus providing new empirical evidence for a universal volatility mechanism among stocks. We also propose a new approach to forecasting one- day-ahead RVs using past intraday RVs as predictors, and expose interesting time-of-day effects that aid the forecasting mechanism.

In the last part, we develop a method for forecasting the realized covariance matrix of asset returns in the U.S. equity market by exploiting the predictive information of graphs in volatility and correlation. Specifically, we augment the Heterogeneous Autoregressive (HAR) model via neighborhood aggregation on these graphs. The results generally suggest that the augmented model incorpotistically and economically significant sample performance over the traditional models.

Analysis

This MPLS example has structured the abstract by providing an outline of the different sections (with one paragraph dedicated to each section). In each paragraph the most relevant topics/moves are covered. For instance, in paragraph two, the writer discusses the purpose of the study, results and implications. In paragraph three, they review the method employed, results and its contributions to future research. 

Effectively, the student is writing four mini abstracts and combining them. This approach is often seen particularly when students are amalgamating discrete studies/publications into a final dissertation or thesis. If you are using this approach, it is important to remember to include some discussion of the overall value of the study (Moves 7 & 8), and not just to provide a summary of the work carried out.