What is a research objective? And what is not!
If you are writing a dissertation, a thesis or a research paper, you will inevitably need to include a set of research objectives. But what exactly is a research objective and which ones should you include? This post defines research objectives and explains how to formulate them.
Defining research objectives
Let’s start with the word ‘objective’. An objective is something you can accomplish. Accomplishing means something you succeed in doing. The objective is something you set out to succeed in doing, so similar to a goal. Therefore a research objective can be defined as “a pre-defined accomplishment to be achieved through research”. It is common to have multiple objectives but do not have so many that you end up just listing what you are going to do to operationalise your study. So ‘conduct a survey’ is not a research objective.
Formulating your research proposals
It is a good idea to start by formulating one overarching general objective. This should inform the reader of your area of focus, variables of interest, study population and setting. This may read as follows:
- To determine the relationship between [variable or factor] and [variable or factor] among [study population] in [setting]. OR
- To measure the determinative power of [factor] on [variable] among [study population] in [setting].
Good verbs for your objective statements
To evaluate | To measure | To compare | To determine |
To examine | To critique | To develop | To identify |
To calculate | To establish | To define | To demonstrate |
Some verbs are more suited to quantitative studies (‘measure’, ‘calculate’, ‘compare’) while others are better for qualitative studies (‘evaluate’, ‘critique’, ‘develop’). Some can be used for both.
Setting secondary objectives
In a quantitative study, your research objectives may be similar to your hypotheses and in a qualitative study they may reflect your research questions. For example, if your main objective is to understand the relationship between inflation and interest rates in the UK, your secondary objectives could relate to different types of inflation or to factors which influence the main relationship, or different time periods. You are basically dividing up the main objective into chunks.
How and where to include research objectives
The most common place for the research objectives to be stated is in the introduction section/ chapter, straight after the problem statement. They should also be briefly stated in the abstract. Always start with the main objective then follow with secondary, more specific objectives.
Main takeaway
A research objective is a statement of something you aim to accomplish through your research. It is not a statement of something you intend to do like ‘conduct a survey’. Aim to have one more general overarching objective and a few more specific objectives. Don’t baffle the reader with more objectives than they could ever remember – 3,4, or 5 is typical.