Friends, Finally, I could list contributions to knowledge in my conclusion chapter. Is it necessary to include it in an abstract as well? I have referred some theses (I am in social science) but I don't see others listing contributions in their Abstract. I am worried for the page length for having almost 1/3rd page length of details....struggling to write in short to adjust in Abstract. Thanks. Swetch

I'm Psychology and I didn't list my contributions to knowledge in my abstract. At my uni you had to keep the abstract to a page and I could only just do that anyway. I had three paragraphs, first introducing topic and methods, second main findings, third relationships between findings and main conclusions.

I had no idea what to put in the abstract and was in such a rush by then to just get it done. I don't think I ever showed it to my supervisors even! I do think spelling out how your thesis contributes to knowledge could be a good thing in an abstract if you can see a good way to do it, but I don't think it's a necessary thing IYSWIM.

Thank you so much Catalinbond for your response. I am reassured now. Will try to include only if sups raise the question. :) :)