as you can see, i'm being picky. this is because, my experience is that with my research and that in this class, this is the stage when you can have the biggest effect. most of the hard work goes into getting the data up, figuring out the place in the literature, understanding, coding and running the stat'l model and interpreting the results. but it is after all that where you can have a big effect if you put the work in to find the angle, the news, the contribution. and THIS is the time when you have the infrastructure all in place and so it is far EASIER now than at any time in doing research to look at one more result, add a new control variable, look at different subsamples of the time series or for subsamples of respondents, or calculate a different quantity of interest, etc... the world will care about the result of that, if you can find a new angle (and support it); after all, we all know that you worked very hard and did all the stuff you were supposed to, but that's not the issue and is not what anyone outside of this class will care about. Its like the foundation of a building which of course is also absolutely essential, but once it is done, you burry it and only look at the beautiful structure built on top of it. don't forget the stuff above street level... one question to ask yourself is 'what (or what new) am I claiming?' or as I've said before 'whose mind will you change about what'. that's what the abstract should address. as examples, see the abstracts and claims in the papers on my preprints page: http://gking.harvard.edu/preprints.shtml. I suggest you just read through them. I mostly write methods papers, and I'm asking most of you to write about the substance, but other than that you will see some (attempts to make) unambiguous claims. the success of the abstract depends on the extent to which you can highlight the new claim, and the success of the paper depends on the extent to which you can support it. Gary