Setting aims and objectives

Most academic projects will have one overall aim which will be broken down into a number of more specific objectives. The development of aims and objectives is one of the most fundamental parts of undertaking a project, and defines the structure of the rest of the project.

Timeline:

  1. Begin your project with a particular topic and perhaps a few key questions in mind.
  2. Start your literature review and through deepening your understanding of your chosen topic, go through a process of refining your aim and objectives. Such refinement will invariably happen as you discover that (for example):
    • your original question has been answered satisfactorily by previous research
    • your original topic is too broad
    • the questions you anticipated answering require knowledge of statistical analysis techniques which are outside your capabilities

Good research objectives are:

    • clear – they are easily understood and unambiguous
    • specific – the concepts used are at a specific enough level
    • answerable – you can see what data are required to answer them and you know how this data will be obtained
    • interconnected – they are related to each other in some meaningful way
    • substantially relevant – they pose interesting and relevant questions vis-à-vis the time and effort invested
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