8c. Tips for Writing Goals and Objectives  

Adapted from:  WCASA (n.d.) Tips for Writing Goals and Objectives. Retrieved from https://www.wcasa.org/file_open.php?id=1032

Equipped with data on a community’s health problems, population health planners are now ready to develop goals and objectives. Writing goals and objectives, a required part of your iterative assignment, can be difficult and time consuming. So, to help you, I have compiled a few tips for writing goals and objectives.

What are goals and objectives?

A program/intervention goal is a broad statement of the intervention strategy’s ultimate benefit (e.g., to improve family health and quality of life by reducing infant mortality).

Objectives are specific, measurable steps that can be taken to meet the goal. Well-written program objectives should answer the question, “how much of what health outcome should happen to whom by when?” For example, “to reduce the incidence of low birthweight in province A by 20% by the year 2030” is an example of an outcome objective specifying longer-term changes in health-related behaviours or population health status indicators. 

Sometimes less specific objectives are written to address the shorter-term results that need to occur in order to realize longer-term changes in morbidity and mortality (e.g., “to increase awareness of the household risks associated with falls among seniors in Calgary”). Measurable program objectives are essential to guide the allocation of program resources and to evaluate the success of an intervention.

Some additional examples

Goal

To ensure that all Canadians have equitable access to safe, affordable, nutritious food.

To enable seniors in Community A to live independently with an optimal quality of life.

Objectives

To increase awareness of the health risks associated with binge drinking among university students (short-term objective).

To reduce the number of alcohol-related incidents at on-campus events (long-term outcome objective)

A common way of describing goals and objectives is to say that:

These are not the only definitions of goals and objectives. Goals and objectives are used in different ways for different purposes and several of your classes will offer you greater insight into using goals and objectives.

Throughout your master programs, you will come to appreciate the importance of measurable goals. Measurable goals and objectives are essential for evaluating progress. Your personal goals are no different. A useful way of making goals and objectives more powerful and measurable is to use the SMART mnemonic. While there are plenty of variants, SMART usually stands for:

S

Specific

M

Measurable

A

Attainable

R

Relevant

T

Time-bound

For example, instead of saying “I will talk to hockey players about the risk of concussions,” a SMART objective would state “To raise awareness about actions that can be taken to reduce the incidence of concussions by 30 percent among hockey players”. 

Specificity of objectives

One of the key challenges in writing specific objectives is setting realistic change targets. For example, if you want to reduce food insecurity in Nunavut, you may wonder if it’s reasonable to set a reduction target of five, ten, or fifteen percent? Community health status data, literature on evidence-based best practices for population health interventions, and national, provincial, or regional/local public policy documents addressing particular health issues are usually good starting points for guidance in setting reasonable targets for change. Please refer to module 10b for some key population health indicators that can help you to develop feasible objectives for your proposed interventions.

Bloom's Taxonomy of Cognitive Objectives

Bloom's taxonomy of cognitive objectives, originated by Benjamin Bloom and collaborators in the 1950's, describes several categories of cognitive learning. These stages can be useful when writing your goals and objectives. 

Useful Verbs for Writing Goals and Objectives 

The following table provides some useful action verbs for goals and objectives sorted according to Bloom’s taxonomy. The one missing piece in this table are possible action verbs for longer-term objectives aimed at changing behaviour or improving population health status. Possible examples of these include:

• Increase
• Decrease
• Reduce
• Strengthen
• Lower
• Raise
• Eliminate
• Remove