Research questions state what your study wants to find out, and research objectives state what you will actually do to find it out. Write the objectives so plainly that an examiner can tick off each one as done or not done. Mostly a PhD has one aim, three to five research questions, and one or two objectives under each question.
We are starting from the point where you already have your gap. Now that gap has to become questions and objectives which the doctoral committee accepts at synopsis stage, and which still hold at the viva. For finding and writing the gap, go to our research gap guide. For turning questions into predictions you can test, there is the hypothesis guide. Here we cover the wording, the number, the scope, and the mistakes because of which objectives come back for correction.
Last reviewed September 2026.
What is the difference between an aim, research questions and objectives?
Many scholars are writing aim, question, objective and hypothesis as if all four mean the same thing. The synopsis templates of many universities also don’t make it clear. Still, each one is different. A committee member who has read hundred synopses will catch it quickly when you mix them.
| Element | What it is | How many | Example (management) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Research problem | The practical or scholarly problem because of which the study is worth doing | One | Hybrid work is now common in Indian IT firms, but engagement surveys show mixed results |
| Aim | The overall purpose of the study, written in one sentence | One | To explain how hybrid work arrangements affect employee engagement in Indian IT services firms |
| Research questions | The specific questions which the study will answer | Usually 3–5 | Does the number of office days per week relate to engagement? |
| Objectives | What you will do to answer each question, written as an outcome somebody can check | One or two per question | To measure the relationship between office days per week and engagement among 400 employees in Bengaluru and Pune |
| Hypotheses | Predictions you can test, and only where the design is confirmatory | As many as the model needs | H1: Supervisor support moderates the relationship between office days and engagement |
First comes the research problem, and that has its own guide. The aim is your broad purpose. Your research questions split the aim into smaller parts that can be answered. Then the objectives tell what you will do for answering each question, in enough detail to show you can do it. Hypotheses enter the picture only when you are testing a prediction using quantitative data.
A few universities want objectives only and no separate questions. That is okay. Even then, write the questions for your own use, as they make the objectives sharper. Other universities want both in the synopsis. See the format your research cell has circulated, or the synopsis format guide for the order most universities follow.
How do you write a good research question?
You should be able to answer a good research question with your own data and within your own time. And the answer should matter to somebody. A weak question mostly fails one of these four tests.
It must be answerable with evidence
Take “Is online learning better than classroom learning?” Nobody can answer this. Better for which students? Measured in what way? For which subject? Compare it with “Do Class 9 students in Kerala government schools who used a blended mathematics programme score differently on the state assessment from those who did not?” This one you can answer, and the committee can see if your design fits.
It must not be answerable with yes or no alone
Ask “Does social media affect students?” and the reply is just yes, and then nothing is left to say. Ask instead how it affects, by how much, for which students, or in what conditions.
It must match a type of design
How you word the question decides what type of study you are doing. Settle the wording early itself and the methodology chapter gets easier.
- Descriptive (“What is the level of…”, “How do teachers describe…”): surveys, content analysis, interviews.
- Relational (“Is X associated with Y?”): correlational surveys, regression, SEM.
- Comparative or causal (“Does X differ between groups?”, “Does the intervention change Y?”): experiments, quasi-experiments, group comparisons.
- Exploratory (“How do first-generation scholars experience supervision?”): qualitative designs, for example interviews and thematic analysis.
- Design or development (“Can an algorithm reduce energy use in a sensor network by…?”): seen a lot in engineering and computer science, and you answer it by building something and benchmarking it.
It must be the right size for a PhD
If the question is too broad, you will not finish. If it is too narrow, it is a master’s dissertation and not a PhD. One rough way to check is to ask yourself whether two or three journal papers can come out of the answers. When the answers to all your questions fit inside one paper only, the scope is probably too small.
Scholars in clinical and health research mostly use PICO (population, intervention, comparison, outcome) to tighten the question. In any field you can also test the question with the FINER criteria (feasible, interesting, novel, ethical, relevant). These criteria are from the textbook Designing Clinical Research by Hulley and colleagues.
How do you write research objectives that a committee accepts?
Think of every objective as something you have promised the committee. In the pre-submission seminar somebody will read out your objectives one by one and ask if you have met them. So write each objective in such a way that the answer is a clear yes or a clear no.
| Avoid | Why | Use instead |
|---|---|---|
| To study | It does not say what you will find out | To measure, to compare, to estimate |
| To understand | Nobody can tell when it is achieved | To identify, to explain, to describe how |
| To know | Same problem as “understand” | To determine, to assess |
| To collect data on | This is an activity and not an outcome | State what the data will show |
| To prove | Research tests things. It rarely proves them | To test whether, to examine whether |
| To create awareness | This is a goal for an intervention, not for research | To assess awareness before and after |
The SMART test (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound) actually comes from management. For objectives it works quite well. Scholars mostly forget the time-bound part. You need not put a date inside every objective, but the full set has to be possible inside your registration period. Suppose your study needs three years of monthly data collection. That will not fit in a four-year PhD where fieldwork starts only in year two.
How many objectives?
The usual number is three to five, and usually that is correct also. With two, the study can look thin. When there are eight or more, many times some of them are actually sub-steps or tasks, and those belong in the methodology. One test from our gap guide is useful here. Delete the objective and see if any part of your gap is left unanswered. If nothing is, that objective is not needed.
Order matters
Arrange the objectives in the order your reader needs them. Mostly the descriptive ones (the present level of something) are placed first. After them come relational or comparative objectives. An objective to develop a model, framework or recommendation goes at the end, since it depends on the others.
Recommendations are not an objective on their own
You will find “To suggest measures to improve…” in a lot of Indian synopses. By itself it is a weak objective, because every study can give some suggestions. If you want to keep it, connect it to your findings, like “to propose, from the results of objectives 1–3, a supervision model and test its acceptability with 15 department heads.” Written that way, it becomes actual research.
Weak and strong examples from several fields
In every pair below the topic stays the same. The strong one is not longer just to look impressive. What it adds is the population, the measure or the comparison, and with that you can check it.
Commerce
Weak: To study the awareness of mutual funds among investors.
Strong: To measure awareness of mutual fund risk categories among retail investors in Coimbatore district, and to compare it across age, income and education groups.
Education
Weak: To understand the problems faced by teachers in online teaching.
Strong: To identify, through interviews with 20 government school teachers in rural Madurai, the barriers they report in delivering online classes, and how they worked around them.
Computer science
Weak: To develop an efficient intrusion detection system.
Strong: To develop a lightweight intrusion detection model for IoT networks and compare its detection rate, false positive rate and memory use with two published baselines on the CIC-IoT2023 dataset.
Public health
Weak: To know about anaemia among adolescent girls.
Strong: To estimate the prevalence of anaemia among adolescent girls attending government schools in one district, and to examine its association with dietary diversity and menstrual history.
Literature
Weak: To study the theme of identity in the novels of a selected author.
Strong: To analyse how narrative voice constructs caste identity in four novels by the selected author, published between 1995 and 2015, in comparison with earlier critical readings.
In a humanities thesis the objective mostly has no number, and nobody expects one there. Precision there comes from naming the texts, the period and the critical question you are asking.
Do you need hypotheses as well as objectives?
You need them only when some part of the study is confirmatory and quantitative. Usually a relational or comparative objective (“to examine whether supervisor support moderates…”) will have one hypothesis or more. Descriptive and exploratory objectives don’t get hypotheses. Three objectives carrying twenty hypotheses looks lopsided to any reader. If the study is purely qualitative and still has hypotheses, the examiners will question it in the viva.
Use the same numbering all through the thesis. For example if objective 2 gives H2a and H2b, show this in a small table inside the methodology chapter. How to word hypotheses, and when you can skip them, is in the hypothesis guide.
Can you change your objectives after the synopsis is approved?
Yes, but through the proper channel and not informally. At most Indian universities the doctoral committee or research advisory committee approves your objectives when the synopsis is approved. Your thesis is then judged against those same objectives, and sometimes the examiner compare the two.
If you are only changing some wording and the scope remains same, mostly nobody objects. Adding a new objective, removing one, or changing one in a big way is a different matter. Usually that has to be written in your progress report and agreed in a DC or RAC meeting. A few universities ask for a formal application for change of title or change of scope. The rules are different at different universities. Check your university’s PhD ordinance or ask the research cell before you change anything in writing.
Whatever you change, see that it goes on record formally. Don’t allow the thesis to slowly move away from the approved objectives, because in the pre-submission seminar the thesis is checked against them.
A final check before submission
- Your aim fits in one sentence, and it names the population and the setting.
- You can answer each research question with the data you plan to collect, inside your registration period.
- Each objective opens with a verb like measure, compare, identify, develop or evaluate, and an outsider can tell if it got done.
- One objective maps to one research question, and every question maps to some part of the gap.
- None of the objectives is only an activity (“to collect data”, “to review literature”).
- You state population, place and time once, clearly, and nothing later in the thesis contradicts them.
- For every objective there is a method in the methodology chapter, and the conclusion chapter answers every question.
For setting out a method against each objective in the thesis, see the methodology guide.
Want a specialist to help with this in your own work? Research Proposal and Synopsis: a free first consultation, then a written scope and fixed quote.
Sources
FAQ
Questions scholars ask
How many research objectives should a PhD have?
Mostly it is three to five. Two objectives only will make the committee feel the work is small for a doctorate. If you have more, some of them are probably sub-steps, and their place is in the methodology.
Should objectives be written in the future tense?
The tense question does not really come up, because in the synopsis objectives are mostly written as infinitives (“to measure…”). The thesis introduction keeps the same wording. Later, in the conclusion, you report in past tense what you found for each objective.
Can a research question and an objective be the same sentence?
Many times they overlap. Some universities also ask for only one of the two. When you write both, let the question say what you want to know, and let the objective add how you will find it out or from whom.
Is “to suggest suitable measures” an acceptable objective?
You will see it often, but alone it is weak. Connect it to your findings and give it proper method, for example by testing the measures you propose with practitioners. The other option is to shift it to the implications part of the discussion.
My supervisor wrote my objectives. Is that a problem?
No, guides shape objectives quite often, and it is normal. But you should know the reason for each objective and be able to defend it in the viva. The examiners will ask you those questions, not your supervisor.
