RESEARCH QUESTION/

HYPOTHESIS
Musarat Alvi
Research Question
 A research question is an answerable inquiry into
a specific concern or issue.
 Sources of Research Question
 Practical Problems
 Secondary Sources
 Primary Research
 Generalize in your context
 Gaps in method
 Type of material used in treatment
 Method of administering and analysis
 Discussion and Conclusion
 Limitations/recommendations for future
research
Characteristics of a research question
 Feasible
 Adequate numbers of subjects/technical
expertise/ time/ money
 Is it possible to measure or manipulate the
variables?
 Interesting
 Novel
 Ethical
 Potential harm to subjects?
 Potential breech of subject confidentiality?
 Relevant
 To scientific knowledge/theory?
 To individual welfare?
 Choosing type of study
If well understood; If poorly understood;
Lots of info, then….? Little info, then…..?

QUANTITATIVE; QUALITATIVE;
Maybe even Can ask only questions;
hypothesize No hypothesis
Deductive logic Inductive logic
 Research Question
 Research question assumes two forms: central broad question
asking for exploration of the central phenomenon and
associated sub-questions
 Ask one or two central questions followed by no more than
five to seven sub-questions.
 Relate the central question to the specific qualitative strategy
of inquiry.
 What is it like for a mother to live with a teenage child who is dying of
cancer?
 Begin the research questions with the words what or how to
convey an open and emerging design.
 Focus on single phenomenon
 Use exploratory verbs that convey the language of emerging
designs.
 Specify the participants and research site for the study.
 Quantitative Research Question/
Hypotheses
 Quantitative research questions inquire about the
relationship among variables that the investigator seeks to
know.
 Used frequently in surveys in social sciences
 Hypotheses are predictions the researcher makes about
the expected relationships among variables.
 Used often in experiments
Guidelines for writing good quantitative
research questions/ hypotheses
 To eliminate redundancy, write only research question OR
hypotheses
 3 parts-independent variable, dependent variable and
population
 Use of variables
 Unless the study intentionally employs demographic
variables as predictors, use non-demographic variables
as independent and dependent variables.
 Use same patterns of word order in the questions or
hypotheses to enable a reader to easily identify the
major variables with independent first and concluding
with dependent in left-to-right order
 Continued… Forms of Hypotheses
 Null hypothesis is a prediction that in the general population , no
relationship or no significant difference exists between groups on a
variable.
 There is no significant difference between the effects of verbal cues, rewards
in terms of social interaction for children with autism and their siblings. (an
investigation of reinforcement types for children with autism on interaction)
 Alternative/ Directional hypothesis is a prediction about the
expected outcome, based on prior literature on the topic that suggest a
potential outcome.
 Religious women with salient gender identity are less socio-politically active
than secular women with salient gender identities
 Alternative non-directional hypothesis makes prediction but not with
exact form of differences.
 gender identity of religious and secular Arab and Jewish women are related
to different socio-political social orders that reflect the different value
systems they embrace.