PB2A

I decided to look at a study that examined the perceived “prosocial effects and enhance(d) social interaction” (Kirkpatrick, Wit) effects of MDMA or ecstasy. The abstract is a short paragraph that is basically a quick summary of the entire research project that’s placed at the beginning of the entire report so that the reader can easily see all of the important parts of the research. The two researchers here, Matthew Kirkpatrick and Harriet Wit begin their abstract with a rationale portion. This is kept to two sentences, which is in line with the goal of a quick summary. It describes that MDMA is commonly thought to have pro-social effects, and counters that claim academically by saying that MDMA’s effects have only been studied in lab settings that have more non-social conditions. This seems to be their hypothesis, which would make sense to put at the beginning since everything else in the research is going to reference back to the hypothesis.

Next section is methods, which describes the methods by which the researchers tested their hypothesis. They describe three settings in which participants were given differing levels of MDMA or placebo. One convention in use here is the abbreviation of words like solitary = SOL and other participant present = OPP. This is also contributing to keeping the abstract as concise as possible since these words are used frequently throughout the rest of the paragraph. The abbreviations keep the paragraph from becoming too wordy, which is helpful for the reader to not get lost.

After methods is a section on the results. The researchers list the first part of their results on the physical effects as “expected” which leads the reader to believe that this is in line with other studies on the drug. The researchers seem to be subtly appealing to the reader’s ethos here as they boost their own credibility by implying that some of their results are the same as other research. They then go on to describe their own results, but do not attempt to analyze or make any connections back to the hypothesis. This is an important convention of this section since they are simply stating the results. By not making any conclusions, it allows other researchers to draw their own conclusions about the findings, which can provide more credibility to the study.

Lastly, the researchers state their own conclusions. They do not make any concrete, hard-line statements about their results, but merely suggestions. This is common in scientific papers since there is no absolute truth, but merely well supported theories. They are modest about their findings and do not try to dramatize their conclusions or claim a major breakthrough. This is another convention of academic papers as it also provides some credibility to the study. Major breakthroughs are rare in science and to exaggerate findings would discredit a study. At the very end, the researchers express the possibilities of further research that they discovered through their research such as the potential for other variables to have changed the effects that MDMA has on social interaction (Kirkpatrick, Wit)

Overall, the tone of the abstract was academic, but not overwhelming. The language was concise and understandable to the average person. Sentence structure varied in length, and was at times difficult to follow. There were never any unnecessary flourishes or fancy words and everything was done with the goal of being as short in length as possible in mind.

The researchers explored the question of if MDMA had prosocial effects and if it enhanced social interaction like is commonly believed.  They operationalized social settings by assigning a value of N = 10 for solitary conditions and N = 11 for the research assistant present and the other participant present conditions. They most likely operationalized social interactions and the level of socialness that each participant experienced, but the method for that was not described in the abstract. The most important aspect to me is the final sentence of the conclusion where they pose possible new research ideas to the reader. This is truly academic to me because the whole point of academics is to learn, and the researchers put out to the public the areas that they discovered weaknesses in their research instead of keeping it to themselves. This way, the public can expand on this information for the advancement of public knowledge.

Source used:

Kirkpatrick, M., & Wit, H. (n.d.). MDMA: A social drug in a social context. [Scholarly project]. Retrieved from http://web.b.ebscohost.com.proxy.library.ucsb.edu:2048/ehost/detail/detail?vid=3&sid=ecc4dbb9-9e21-47c0-bd4d-81da883c2443@sessionmgr114&hid=124&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ==#AN=102482562&db=a9h