Aim and Scope of the Study 65
needed to say what he meant by ‘solving’ it: in this case ‘to identify ways in which
the Japanese government could improve the social status of the burakumin’.
Your stated aim should have three characteristics:
- It should follow as a logical consequence of the problem statement. You identify
a problem, and your aim is to address it; as just noted, you have to be clear about
what the problem is. - It should be singular. You must identify only one aim. This is not easy to do.
Students often show magnificent ingenuity in stringing all the aims they want to
include into the same sentence, as Alastair had. But four aims in the one sentence
are still four aims. Nearly always some of the excess aims are in fact steps in the
method that you have already unconsciously been working on to achieve that one
true aim. If permitted to give just one piece of advice to students writing theses,
I would say this: stick to a single paramount aim. If you do this, and get it right,
the entire thesis can be built on this sole cornerstone. If you have two aims, you
have to achieve both. To do this, you must address one first and then start an-
other. Your thesis will be split in two parts, and these must be meshed into each
other. - The conclusions in your last chapter must respond to this aim. Obvious? Each of
the examiners of my own thesis pointed out that I had promised one thing, and
delivered another. Over the months you work on your thesis, it is easy to forget
the relationship of the introduction to the final conclusion. When you have writ-
ten the last sentence of your conclusions, go back and re-read your aim. If the
conclusions don’t respond to the aim, you had better rewrite it; and don’t forget,
you will also need to rewrite the problem statement that leads up to it.
Recall the list of questions that examiners may typically be asked to think of as
they look over your thesis. One was, ‘Does the candidate show sufficient familiar-
ity with, and understanding and critical appraisal of, the relevant literature?’ You
will need to think critically at each stage of your work. To start the process of being
critical, you must first set limits. A major part of being critical is to be able to set the
terms of your debate and focus on what is particularly relevant to your aim.
To get students thinking, I ask an impossible question: What is the best restau-
rant near the university? Any answer sets off the need to ask a number of related
questions. Best for whom? Under what conditions? How far away is it? What type
of food? How expensive are the main dishes? You can quickly see that such an
investigation could potentially never be completed. We then write out a scope for
our investigation (for example, ‘Find an Italian restaurant within five kilometres
of campus that has meals for under $ 20’) and start our discussion again with more
focus.
In some areas of study, the scope of the investigation might require only a few
sentences. In others, especially newly developing areas, it might require an elabo-
rate discussion. (In an extreme case, the part of a thesis that has the most impact
could be the discovery of a new problem.) Here is an example of a scope.