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Exercise 1: Defining Aims and Objectives of Your Study

This self-check exercise is adapted from Activity 17 Producing Aims and Objectives from
the book 100 Activities for Teaching Research Methods by Catherine Dawson (2016).

Check your aims and objectives against these criteria:

1. Do your aim(s) and objective(s) answer the five Ws about your research: what, who,
why, when, where?
YES / NO

2. Do your aim(s) and objective(s) give signal about how the main approach of the
research project? (Useful words “identify”, “observe”, “describe” or “explore”)?
YES / NO

3. Do your aim(s) and objective(s) agree with your methodology?
YES / NO

4. Are your aim(s) and objective(s) clear and concise?
YES / NO

5. Are your aim(s) and objective(s) realistic in terms of resources (time, money, access
to research participants)?
YES / NO

6. Are your objectives distinct from each other, in case you have several objectives?
YES / NO

Useful phrases

Here are some useful phrases to describe aims and objectives from the PhraseBook For
Writing Papers and Research in English by Howe and Henriksson (2007):
The aim or objective of the study is …
… to put forward an explanation for … … to make recommendations for …
… to put forward a theory of or for … … to address the issues of …
… to examine the types of … … to move beyond …
… to verify the role of … in … … to identify and evaluate …
… to investigate what role, if any, … plays … to evaluate or examine critically …
in …

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