What is the Purpose of your Study?

It is not worthwhile to go around the world to count the cats in Zanzibar (Maxwell 2005, citing Thoreau)

It is important to be clear about the reason why you are undertaking your study. An unclear purpose will result in a muddied up process, and therefore, results that may not be either credible or valid. The purpose statement is the central controlling idea in a study (Creswell, 2009, p. 111).

Maxwell (2005) “Qualitative Research Design” recommends that researchers write regularly and systematically about their research for the researchers own consumption, as well as for discussion with others. In his very helpful chapter 2, he discusses goals of research leading with the following question: Why are you doing this study?

The point is that you need to be clear on the purpose of your study, and that purpose has to lead to a question/questions whose answers are worth knowing. Clear goals serve as a guide for your study= goal here includes desires, motives and purposes, whatever is leading you to want to engage in your study.

Maxwell reminds us that goals a) help to guide your other design decisions to ensure that your study is worth doing, and b) they are essential to justifying your study.  It is likely that you have personal, practical and intellectual goals for you study. Personal goals motivate you to engage in the study but may not be of much value to others (e.g. need to advance your career, desire to change a situation). Often, personal goals influence your choice of dissertation topic, and are likely to impact your motivation (and persistence) through the dissertation process. More often than not, personal goals remain unstated – however, it is helpful to be clear on what your own personal goals are even if you will not discuss them in your study. Off course if you engage in qualitative, there is room to indicate the personal goals that are impacting your choices. For example, one of my mentees chose to study successful African immigrant faculty in US institutions, one because she is an African immigrant, and two, because as someone who desires to enter the professorial ranks, she is interested in learning how they ‘made it’. Another chose to study long term health care because this was his industry for many years as owner of nursing homes, and he consults to nursing homes today – thus his study would help to improve his consulting work. Being clear about your personal goals also enables you to be reflective of your subjectivities – it helps you beware of looking only for the answers that fit your presuppositions.

Practical and intellectual/scholarly goals are important to you as well as to other people. Practical goals focus on accomplishing something, meeting a need, changing a situation, achieving a particular objective; intellectual goals focus on understanding something, often filling a gap that other research has not adequately addressed. The second student (now a newly minted PhD) mentioned above, aimed at improving his own consulting practice by gaining a better understanding of leadership praxis within the long term health care industry. His study was endorsed by one of the industry professional associations in recognition of its practical utility.

Generally, the intellectual/scholarly goal of your study is framed in terms of ‘purpose statement’. This begins with a sentence such as:

The purpose of this study is to…(a verb here, such as evaluate, explore, explain, describe, determine, examine, etc. You then expand on that purpose in several sentences/a paragraph. 

Your practical goal is framed in terms of the “Significance of the Study” where you talk about the relevance or practical utility of your study to practitioners – teachers, administrators, managers, pastors – the ‘second’ audience of your study. Your significance section also discusses further your scholarly goal by discussing how your study will expand our understanding of a particular area of study. In qualitative studies, you would need to discuss your personal goals, either in chapter 1 or chapter 3 (Introduction, or Methods) with a sub-heading such as ‘role of the researcher’, ‘researcher presuppositions’, ‘researchers predilections’, ‘how I came to this study area’…etc.

Both Maxwell (2005, chapter 2) and Creswell (2009, chapter 6) offer helpful templates for constructing your purpose statement. Maxwell offers templates/exercises for constructing a purpose statement for a qualitative study. Creswell offers templates for qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods designs. Both provide excellent examples of well crafted purpose statements.


Maxwell, Joseph A. 2005. Qualitative research design: An interactive approach. 2 ed. Thousand Oaks: Sage. (3rd Edition will be published by June 2012).

Creswell, John W. 2009. Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches. 3rd ed. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.

The Relational Nature of Research

This week I spent several hours working on a manuscript with a colleague, constructing a paper on relationships and communities in research. In the process of writing, I also ended up doing a lot of reading, trying to get clarity on issues such as power differentials between researchers and participants, vulnerability, reflexivity, and other topics related to autoethnography/qualitative research design. I came to the realization that, some of the issues where researchers use their authorial power to represent participants the way they want to, without caring how such participants would feel about how they are represented, is perhaps a failure to recognize the human dignity of 'others', and perhaps not a very good use of researchers power.

Reflecting on this failure - of recognizing the human dignity of others - whether marginalized or not, made me realize that, part of what I enjoyed doing in my own dissertation work, was choosing to keep the confidence of my participants. This was a dialogic process, where I was open to hearing about anything and everything, but also told them that, they were free to tell me what they would rather I kept just between us (Ngunjiri, 2007, 2010). I endeavored to give [most of] them transcripts of our interviews, so they'd add/subtract whatever they saw fit. For a few, it was logistically impossible since I transcribed the interviews after my return to the States.

You see, even though I haven't seen most of those women since I collected my data in the summer of 2005, I believed then (and now) that "brief encounters do not necessarily mean superficial connections...[I] see relationships as more than vehicles for data gathering, more than points of access. [I] see then as central to the empirical, ethical, and humanistic dimensions of research design, as evolving and changing processes of human encounters" (Lawrence-Lightfoot and Davis, 1997, p138, 139). Obviously, this is mostly true of qualitative research designs, where relationships are/ought to be king.

Authentic relationships that engender reciprocity and symmetry, that encourage skepticism and appreciation, and that are built on trust  (Lawrence-Lightfoot and Davis) can help us in achieving our research goals, while also building/rebuilding the communities we purport to represent. I may not have seen the participants from my study in the seven years since, I may never meet with them again; however, I hope that when they read what I said about them, how I interpreted their life stories, the way I constructed their narratives, and celebrated their achievement as women, leaders, Africans, and human beings, they will always feel affirmed and will recognize the essence of who they are in my work. They do not have to agree with all my interpretations, but I do hope they see themselves even more clearly through my portraits. That is what it means for me to engage in research, while keeping "relational concerns as high as research" ( Ellis, 2007, p. 25). Think about that as you engage in designing or undertaking your own research. What is your relational responsibility - or, what do the relationships developed through your research require of you?


Ellis, C. (2007). Telling Secrets, Revealing Lives: Relational Ethics in Research With Intimate Others Qualitative Inquiry, 13(1), 3-29. doi: 10.1177/1077800406294947

Lawrence-Lightfoot, S., & Davis, J. H. (1997). The art and science of portraiture. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Ngunjiri, F. W. (2010). Women's spiritual leadership in Africa : Tempered radicals and critical servant leaders. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Ngunjiri, F. W. (2007). Painting a counter-narrative of African womanhood: Reflections on how my research transformed me. Journal of Research Practice, 3(1), article m4. Retrieved from http://jrp.icaap.org/index.php/jrp/article/view/53/76