How to write abstract for conference when you have no results yet?

This situation is not uncommon; in my case, I have to submit abstract for conference in September by the end of January already. But the problem is I have no results yet. I'm pretty sure that in those 8 months I will get pretty interesting results. But..

How to write smooth abstract without reporting results?

I started something along these lines:

1. This and this is an important factor ...


2. However, few studies on this topic have been done ...


3. In our study, we compare this and this



4. ??

Now the problem comes in point 4, where I should report some results.

• How should I go around that?


• What formulations should I use?


• Shall I speak in present, future, or past tense? The studies are usualy written in past tense like "we analysed, we compared...", but in this case I would tend to present tense.

Thank you for your help. Examples are welcome!

P.S.: this is an interesting discussion however didn't give me actual guidelines of how to write it.

Answer

Don't write results you don't have. Neither in the present, past or future tense. Just don't do it. Yet, I agree with you that there are circumstances where you do need to write an abstract on on-going work. For example, many big conferences in my field now ask for abstracts to be submitted up to 10 months in advance of the conference itself! If you are a post-doc staying on a 12-month project, you want to present something but you might not yet know how things will turn out. So, two techniques I propose:

1. 
   

   Just write about the methodology, and present your goals in a general way, without “predicting” particular results but insisting on the importance of the topic. That is, emphasize strongly your points #1 and #2, and then describe point #3 as you would your “results”. Things like:

   
   

   
   

   In this particular study, we compare the efficiency of methods A and B on given subsets of a reference database. We use a large number of different criteria for measuring efficiency, including …, … and … We also discuss in detail the implementation of subprocess X in method B, because its has not been specifically optimized in the existing literature.

   
   

   
   

   I know it sounds vague, but that's the best you can achieve honestly, without pretending to know what you expect to find.

   
   



2. 
   

   Bait and switch: if you have existing results in a closely related study, you can incorporate them as part of your results. Mix this approach with above, so that you have at least a few specific results to list in your point #4. Then, when you will make your presentation, just present your new results alongside the old (some people would remove completely the old results, but that makes it too much of a “bait and switch” for my taste). It is, after all, quite common for people to include newer results in orals/posters that they obtained after the original submission. It is not frowned upon, as long as you keep a decent agreement between the original abstract and the final content.