Going from General Aims to Specific Aims

It is in this step that you really set actionable and measurable goals. Your basic goals will remain the same; it is just that based on understanding how you will measure the change, where you are starting from, and what you think is realistic to aim for, you will be able to state a much clearer goal. These goals should be derived from your baseline data and should be associated with a time frame as well.

Here are some examples of converting a general aim to a specific aim:

• General aim: To get people to cardiac catheterization faster.
• Specific aim (option 1): To reduce the average door-to-PCI time from 145 minutes to 90 minutes within 6 months.
• Specific aim (option 2): To increase the percentage of patients whose door-to-PCI time is 90 minutes or less from 25% to 90% within 6 months.
• Specific aim (option 3): To reduce the percentage of patients whose door-to-PCI time is greater than 300 minutes from 10% to less than 2% within 6 months.

As you can see, each of these specific aims is related to the general aim, is measurable, and yet might suggest a slightly different approach to your intervention. You would only be able to know which aim really fit your needs after reviewing your baseline data to look for patterns, trends, and outliers.