There is perhaps always an answer By Prof Dr Sohail Ansari & Aims in research

Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after. Henry David Thoreau
Don’t limit knowledge to your own learning

*       The limit of one’s knowledge is not the limit of knowledge; therefore, if one has no answer, it does not mean that there is no answer.  

*       Islamic principles echo in the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson

As a pioneering philosopher, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s ideas has helped mold American culture, has provided substantial direction for American thinking. To the surprise and probably the dismay of many Americans, “Islamic principles echo in the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson…[he was] influenced by the Quran” Much of the supernatural aspects of Emerson’s essays come from the Quran. This American transcendentalist “found the Prophet of Islam an inspiring figure”

In the religious context, the nature around us is a direct manifestation of God within the framework of how Muslims believe the world is composed. Similarly in Emerson’s case, nature, still related to God, has an independent status as “the most ancient religion”, as an entity nearly pre-existing human spirituality and the acknowledgement of a supernatural force. Emerson’s demonstration of nature runs, for the most part, parallel to the explanations in the Quran of the nature of nature. In a religious and anti-Romantic tone, Emerson preaches that nature is “medicinal, [it] sobers and heals us” (Emerson 79). The Quran’s many verses work to sober or sustain within the reader an understanding of the world around him or her. Surah 16, verse 68 explains how “thy Lord taught the Bee to build its cells in the hills, on trees, and in men’s habitations.” The Islamic depiction of survivalist adaptation in the natural world mirrors Emerson’s pre-Darwinian portrayal of the environmental system, how it “arms and equips an animal to find its place and living in the earth”. Both Allah and Nature are puppeteers of the Natural System according to the Quran and Emerson’s transcendentalist doctrine. Both Allah and Nature arrange every single physical thing into a certain course and set it in connection with other physical things. They are the spinners of the web that is our universe where all entities share a plane of existence. In Surah 67 verse 3, readers are asked to do the impossible task to “look again [at God’s world], can you see any disorder?” The intricate organization of things in nature and their interconnectedness are due to the conviction that God “produced therein all kinds of things in due balance” (Quran 15:19). The Natural System is composed “without any pillars that ye can see” (Quran 13:2). Discourse as such courses all throughout Emerson’s references to the natural world outside of the city untainted by illusory social constructs. Once again we see the Muslim presence Emersonian thought.

Quotes:

·         "Don't limit a child to your own learning, for he was born in another time. " - Rabindranath Tagore

Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance. Confucius
It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see. Henry David Thoreau
Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves. Henry David Thoreau

Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it. Henry David Thoreau
We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid. Benjamin Franklin
The most I can do for my friend is simply be his friend. Henry David Thoreau

The aim of the work, i.e. the overall purpose of the study, should be clearly and concisely defined. Aims: Are broad statements of desired outcomes, or the general intentions of the research, which 'paint a picture' of your research project. Emphasize what is to be accomplished (not how it is to be accomplished)

Objectives, on the other hand, should be specific statements that define measurable outcomes, e.g. what steps will be taken to achieve the desired outcome.

Aims and objectives

It is often useful to consider your research questions in terms of aim(s) and objectives.

The aim of the work, i.e. the overall purpose of the study, should be clearly and concisely defined.

Aims:

• Are broad statements of desired outcomes, or the general intentions of the research, which 'paint a picture' of your research project
• Emphasize what is to be accomplished (not how it is to be accomplished)
• Address the long-term project outcomes, i.e. they should reflect the aspirations and expectations of the research topic.

Once aims have been established, the next task is to formulate the objectives. Generally, a project should have no more than two or three aims statements, while it may include a number of objectives consistent with them.

Objectives are subsidiary to aims and:

• Are the steps you are going to take to answer your research questions or a specific list of tasks needed to accomplish the goals of the project
• Emphasize how aims are to be accomplished
• Must be highly focused and feasible
• Address the more immediate project outcomes
• Make accurate use of concepts
• Must be sensible and precisely described
• Should read as an 'individual' statement to convey your intentions

Here is an example of a project aim and subsidiary objectives:

Aim

• To critically assess the collection and disposal operations for bulky household waste in order to identify factors, which contribute to performance and technical efficiency.

Objectives

• To critically assess bulky waste operations by local authorities, including volumes/types of materials arising and current disposal/recovery routes.
• To classify and evaluate the operation of furniture recovery schemes nationally.
• To make recommendations to improve the operational effectiveness of, and to maximise recovery opportunities of bulky waste collection.

Aims and Objectives should:

• Be concise and brief.
• Be interrelated; the aim is what you want to achieve, and the objective describes how you are going to achieve that aim.
• Be realistic about what you can accomplish in the duration of the project and the other commitments you have
• Provide you and your supervisor(s) with indicators of how you intend to:
  .
• Approach the literature and theoretical issues related to your project.
• Access your chosen subjects, respondents, units, goods or services.
• Develop a sampling frame and strategy or a rationale for their selection.
• Develop a strategy and design for data collection and analysis.
• Deal with ethical and practical problems in your research.

Aims and Objectives should not:

• Be too vague, ambitious or broad in scope.
• Just repeat each other in different terms.
• Just be a list of things related to your research topic.
• Contradict your methods - i.e. they should not imply methodological goals or standards of measurement, proof or generalisability of findings that the methods cannot sustain.

At the conclusion of your project you will need to assess whether or not you have met your objectives and if not, why not. However, you may not always meet your aims in full, since your research may reveal that your questions were inappropriate, that there are intervening variables you could not account for or that the circumstances of the study have changed, etc. Whatever the case, your conclusion will still have to reflect on how well the research design, which was guided by your objectives has contributed to addressing your aims.

 Activity 20: Aims & Objectives

Aims and objectives – what’s the difference?

Posted on June 9, 2014by pat thomson

You’re ready, you’re aimed, and now you have to fire off the objectives. But you’re a bit confused. What”s the difference between the two?

An aims-objectives confusion might arise when you are writing thesis proposal and the introductory thesis chapter. It’s always an issue in research bids. The what’s-the-difference question can have you going around in ever smaller unproductive circles if you can’t figure out a way to differentiate between the two things. And the difference is something I’ve recently been asked about, so I’ve decided to post something of an answer.

Dictionaries are only vaguely helpful when thinking about aims and objectives. My desk dictionary says that an aim is to do with giving direction. An aim is “something intended or desired to be obtained by one’s efforts”. On the other hand an objective is to do with achieving an object, it’s about actions, “pertaining to that whose delineation is known”. Now who actually speaks like this? The fact that these definitions are offered in this very formal language doesn’t help clarify matters. But, once past the antiquated expression, you might discern that the difference between the two is somehow related to a hope or ambition (aim) versus a material action (objective). Or we might say – and it is what is commonly said about aims and objectives – the aim is the what of the research, and the objective is the how.

So taking this what-how as a kind of loose and sloppy differentiation between the two, the rough rule of thumb with aims and objectives is generally that:

(1) The aim is about what you hope to do, your overall intention in the project. It signals what and/or where you aspire to be by the end. It’s what you want to know. It is the point of doing the research. An aim is therefore generally broad. It is ambitious, but not beyond possibility.

The convention is that an aim is usually written using an infinitive verb – that is, it’s a to + action. So aims often start something like.. My aim in this project is … to map, to develop, to design, to track, to generate, to theorise, to build … Sometimes in the humanities and social sciences we have aims which attempt to acknowledge the inevitable partiality of what we do, so we aim ‘to investigate, to understand, and to explore… ‘ But lots of project reviewers and supervisors prefer to see something less tentative than this – they want something much less ambivalent, something more like to synthesise, to catalogue, to challenge, to critically interrogate ….

(2) The objectives, and there are usually more than one, are the specific steps you will take to achieve your aim. This is where you make the project tangible by saying how you are going to go about it.

Objectives are often expressed through active sentences. So, objectives often start something like In order to achieve this aim, I will… collect, construct, produce, test, trial, measure, document, pilot, deconstruct, analyse… Objectives are often presented as a (1) (2) (3) formatted list – this makes visible the sequence of big steps in the project. The list of objectives spells out what you actually and really will do to get to the point of it all.

You have to make the objectives relatively precise. Having a bunch of vague statements isn’t very helpful – so ‘I will investigate’ or ‘I will explore’ for example aren’t particularly useful ways to think about the research objectives. How will you know when an investigation has ended? How will you draw boundaries around an exploration? In thinking about the answer to these questions, you are likely to come up with the actual objectives.

Objectives have to be practical, do-able and achievable. Research reviewers generally look to see if the time and money available for the research will genuinely allow the researcher to achieve their objectives. They also look to see if the objectives are possible, actually research-able.

Because the objectives also act as project milestones, it’s helpful to express them as things that are able to be completed – so for example scoping an archive of materials will have an end point which may then lead on to a next stage/objective. Even if objectives are to occur simultaneously, rather than one after the other, it is important to be clear about what the end point of each step/objective will be, and how it will help achieve the aim.

What not to do

It’s really helpful to think about what can go wrong with aims and objectives. There are some predictable problems that you want to avoid when writing them. These are some common aims-objectives issues:

• There are too many aims. One or two is usually enough. (I might stretch to three for other people’s projects if pushed, but I usually have only one for my own projects.)

• Aims and objectives waffle around, they don’t get to the point and the reader doesn’t have a clue what is actually intended and will be done – aims and objectives need to be concise and economically expressed.

• Aims and objectives don’t connect – the steps that are to be taken don’t match up with the overall intention.

• The aims and the objectives are not differentiated, they are basically the same things but said in different words.

• The objectives are a detailed laundry list rather than a set of stages in the research.

• The objectives don’t stack up with (compare) the research methods – in other words they are either not do-able, or what is to be done won’t achieve the desired results.

The final thing to say is that aims and objectives can’t be rushed. Because they generate the research questions and underpin the research design, sorting the aims and objectives are a crucial early stage in planning a research project. Aims and objectives are a foundation on which the entire project is constructed, so they need to be sturdy and durable.

1.1

The overall study objective is to formulate a broad planning and development framework setting out guidelines and standards for more effective and comprehensive planning for pedestrians at different levels of planning, based on which conceptual Pedestrian Plans would be prepared for application and assessment of broad impacts and implementation mechanisms of the pedestrian planning proposals.

1.2    The Study aims to promote pedestrian planning in the plan making and development process and establish the prima facie feasibility of the pedestrian planning proposals to achieve the following objectives:

(Based on the first impression; accepted as correct until proved otherwise.

"A prima facie case of professional misconduct")

a.                Reinforcement of pedestrian linkages between major pedestrian activity nodes.
b.                Integration with the land use, urban design, transport, tourism, heritage conservation and environmental framework for more efficient use of pedestrian activity space and circulation;
c.                creation of a clean, safe, convenient, comfortable, pedestrian friendly and pleasant environment not only for the pedestrians' movements but as a place of attraction to capture their stay; and
d.               Introducing or increasing the social, economic and cultural vibrancy and vitality for the pedestrian areas and their surroundings.