Aim and Objectives

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Aim and Objectives

• Professor Marcus Ormerod

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Aim

• The aim is always singular and is a statement of
  what it is you are seeking to achieve by
  undertaking this research.
• A good aim is focussed demonstrating that you
  have narrowed down the topic to something that is
  do-able and manageable.
• An example of an aim is
• to investigate the impact that poorly designed
  buildings have on the lives of disabled people

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Aim more examples

• to investigate the barriers that people face in
  accessing poorly designed buildings
• to investigate the barriers that wheelchair users
  face in accessing poorly designed buildings
• to investigate the barriers that wheelchair users
  face in accessing public library facilities

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Aim as a research question

• An alternative to writing the aim as a statement,
  is to consider the aim as a question or as a
  hypothesis.
• descriptive what is happening?
• Normative what is happening compared to what
  should happen?
• Correlation what is the relationship, and the
  strength of this relationship between variable x
  and variable y?
• Impact what impact does a change in X have on Y?

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Objectives

• Essentially objectives are statements of intended
  outcomes from the research, not written as
  questions or hypotheses, but written as
  statements.
• They are written as though you have completed the
  research and are looking back on what you did in
  order to meet the aim of the research.

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Objectives

• Another way of looking at objectives is to think
  about what it is you need to demonstrate an
  understanding of in order to meet the aim of the
  research.
• An aim / question / hypothesis would typically
  have about 5 or 6 objectives to support it.
• Objectives needs to be SMART specific (and
  focused), measureable, achievable, realistic, and
  timely (fit within the timescale for the
  research).