This may be the single biggest step you take. This is where you develop a focus for your research BEFORE you start your literature search.

The fact that you have gotten this far indicates that you are naturally curious. Unless you place some boundaries on yourself, your research project may end up with a reference list a mile long and a proposal to try to answer about half the outstanding questions in medicine.

A goal is a general statement of what you want to accomplish, and it subsumes one or more objectives which, when achieved, will result in the accomplishment of the goal.

An example of a medical research goal for the practitioner might be:

     "I want to determine the most effective way to encourage
     diabetic patients who are not careful with their blood
     sugar monitoring to more carefully monitor and control 
     their blood sugars."

Examples of objectives for this goal might be (not necessarily in this order):

• Objective 1: Identify 30 diabetics who do well at controlling their blood sugar and 30 diabetics who do not do well at controlling their blood sugar.
• Objective 2: Learn as much as I can from these patients about what makes them different with respect to controlling their blood sugar.
• Objective 3: Learn as much as I can from the literature about the differences between diabetics who control their blood sugar well and those who do not.
• Objective 4: Learn as much as I can from colleagues about the differences between diabetics who control their blood sugar well and those who do not.
• Objective 5: Learn as much as I can about barriers (and perceived barriers) to effective blood sugar control (from the patients, from literature, and from colleagues).
• Objective 6: Identify a promising procedure for helping diabetic patients to overcome barriers to effective blood sugar control.
• Objective 7: Determine how many diabetic patients (including both those who do well at blood sugar control and those who do not) that I have available for a research project and use this information to inform my choice of research design and data analysis.
• Objective 8: Conduct the study and determine if the procedure worked (and if it is realistic to use in practice).