Abstracts are designed to be short summaries of your paper.  An effective abstract is only about 3% of the total length of a paper.  When someone surveys the literature and attempts to discern what they will read thoroughly, the abstract is a major influence.  As a result, if you would like people to read your paper, then thoughtfully craft a quality abstract.  The presentation of ideas is very similar to that found in the paper itself--first a few sentences introducing the topic, a statement or two on the methodology used, a couple of sentences summarizing the results, and a few concluding thoughts.

    Don't's for an abstract:

                         --Don't cite literature unless absolutely necessary such as when you are testing
                                a specific hypothesis
                         --Don't include statistical results and minimize data that you might want to include
                                wherever possible--these can be found in the text of your paper.