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• Research is systematic inquiry that uses disciplined methods to answer questions or solve problems. The ultimate goal of research is to develop and expand knowledge
• Nursing research is systematic inquiry designed to generate trustworthy evidence about issues of importance to the nursing profession, including nursing practice, education, administration, and informatics.
• The Importance of Research in Nursing

  Research findings from rigorous studies provide especially strong evidence for informing nurses’ decisions and actions. Nurses are accepting the need to base specific nursing actions on research evidence indicating that the actions are clinically appropriate, cost-effective, and result in positive outcomes for clients
• Research objectives or aims are clear, concise, declarative statements.
• In quantitative research, the objectives or aims usually focus on one or two variables (or concepts) and indicate whether the variables are to be identified or described.
• Objectives can also focus on relationships or associations among variables, differences between groups or comparison of groups on selected variables, and prediction of a dependent variable with selected independent variables.
• Research objectives or aims are developed based on the research problem.
• In qualitative research, objectives or aims are also developed based on the research problem and purpose, to clarify a study’s goals.
• The objectives in qualitative studies usually have a broader focus and include more abstract and complex concepts.
• A research question is a concise, interrogative statement that is worded in the present tense and includes one or more of a study’s principal concepts or variables.
• Research questions address variables and sometimes the relationships among them within a population.
• In quantitative studies, the research question hints heavily at the type of study conducted, implying incidence, description, connections between ideas, and cause-and-effect relationships, and may even contain the exact words incidence, prevalence, description, relationship, prediction, and cause and effect.
• Most qualitative nursing studies are guided by the research purpose; very few include stated research questions.
• In qualitative designs, the research question implies describing the lived experience and possibly the meaning of that experience to the study participants, generating models or theory, understanding human behavior and experience within a social context, understanding the cultural context that acts as a platform for human behavior and experience, or relating basic narrative descriptive information.
• The research question may even contain the exact words lived experience, framework or theoretical development, society, culture, or narrative.