Comparing the formats of MA produced abstracts with other disciplines matching with ISO 214 at the University of Science and Research Branch of Khuzestan: From 2007 to 2011

The present research aimed at comparing the formats of abstracts among social sciences students at the MA level with other fields of studies regarding their appraisal based on the standards of ISO 214 between 2007 and 2011.
The study design was based on ex-post facto research and the data was collected through library search. Data included 3469 abstracts collection among the MA theses of the graduated students of Social Sciences, Politics, Knowledge and Information Science, Counseling, English language teaching, and Irrigation. The research instrument was a checklist developed by ISO 214 to check the criteria used to evaluate the appropriate formats of the abstracts at the MA level. This checklist was used to compare the MA abstract formats with those of standard abstracts written based on ISO 214.Analysis of the data was conducted through SPSS 17.
Findings: The Chi-square analysis indicated that 50% of the abstracts carried out ISO 214 standards and the rest prepared inappropriately concerned with their styles of writing, spelling, meaning and coherence. In terms of ranking the abstracts concerning their appropriateness, Knowledge and Information Science, Counseling and English language teaching MA abstracts were better than those of Social Sciences, Politics, and Irrigation majors.
The research may be useful for MA students and the supervisors since they need to follow ISO 214 to write their abstracts with clarity and effectiveness.