Hey friends,
Recently, I went through all the emails I received from the newsletters I sent (more on this soon)
A question that comes back often in the emails but also during the sessions I conduct:
“I have a research topic, I identified a problem and I also have my research question but I feel lost”
The ntural step is to turn your research question(s) into research objectives.
Your question tells the reader what you want to find
But your research objectives explain what you will do to find the answer(s)
In other words, it’s the goal of your study
It’s like a roadmap or a plan. Without it, you will spent weeks and months reading papers, collecting data but still feel lost because you are not sure if these answer your question
Let me give you an analogy:
You get into your car, you know how to drive, and you spend some time driving, without following specific directions. It might be fun on some roads, but at some point you might feel lost (literally) because you didn’t have a destination in mind nor a plan to follow
Let’s take a a research question:
“What factors influence PhD students to publish in open-access (OA) journals?”
A research objective could be something like:
“Identify and analyze the factors that influence the decisions of PhD students to publish in OA journals”
The question is… well a question, it asks what we want to know
The objectives shows what we plan to find.
Now you might also hear or read about research aim. It’s basically the overall purpose of your study that you will break into smaller objectives
Back to our example:
The research aim is: understand the factors that influence PhD candidates to publish in OA journals
The research objectives can be:
- Identify the financial factors
- examine how journal reputation affects publication decisions
- explore the role of institutional/national publishing policies
You will find that research objectives use action verbs like:
- explore
- identify
- describe
- compare
- examine or analyze
- measure
etc
All these verbs should be connected to the main elements of your question. And they should be tasks you can manage
Also, a question, that comes back often is how do you distinguish qualitative and quantitative research from the objectives of a study
For qualitative research, verbs like explore, describe or interpret are typically used
Whereas in quantitative research, you will find measure, compare, examine
Of course the important thing is that your objectives match your research question, study design and data
Finally, some mistakes to avoid:
- As mentioned in my previous post, be specific. Avoid objectives that are too broad
- Objectives are not research activities like sending a survey, or sharing a questionnaire
- Remove objectives that do not correspond to your research question
- Too many objectives. Each one of them should have a specific purpose
Let me know what you think and let’s continue the conversation in our community
See you next week,
Jamal
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