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The current community of psychologists believe that the best approach to understanding behaviour is to carry out scientific research. By conducting scientific research, the research needs to be observable, valid and reliable. To do this psychological research should follow the scientific method. One of the important steps in scientific research is to create a hypothesis before starting the procedure of the study.
The hypothesis is a predictive, testable statement predicting the outcome and the results the researcher expects to find.
The hypothesis provides a summary of what direction, if any is taken, or non taken at all, the study will take to investigate a theory. In scientific research, there is a criterion that hypotheses need to be met to be regarded as acceptable. If a hypothesis is disregarded, the research may be rejected by the community of psychology researchers.
The purpose of including hypotheses in psychology research is:
When carrying out research the first step that researchers take is to investigate the research area that they are interested in. From this researchers, are required to identify a gap in the literature. Filling the gap essentially means finding what previous work has not been explained yet, investigated to a sufficient degree, or simply expanding or further investigating a theory if doubt is present.
The researcher then forms a research question that the researcher will attempt to answer in their study.
The hypothesis is a predictive statement of what is expected to happen when testing the research question.
The hypothesis can be used for later data analysis. This includes inferential tests such as hypothesis testing and identifying if statistical findings are significant.
A hypothesis helps identify what the research is attempting to study, freepik.com/freepik
When carrying out research, researchers have to follow certain steps to formulate testable hypotheses. Overall, the researcher has to consider where the investigation is likely going to go, will it be looking for a difference caused by independent variables? Or will it be more concerned with the correlation between variables?
All researchers will likely complete the following
The above steps are used to formulate testable hypotheses.
The hypothesis plays an important role in research as it indicates what and how a variable is going to be investigated in the research.
The hypothesis essentially provides a summary of what and how something will be investigated. This is important as it can make sure that the researcher has carefully planned how the research will be done, as the researchers have to follow a set procedure to conduct research.
This is known as the scientific method.
When formulating hypotheses, things that should be considered by researchers are:
The data analysis method is called hypothesis testing.
IV is what the experimenter manipulates to see if it affects the DV.
DV is the variable that is being measured after the IV has been manipulated or after it changes during the experiment.
When a hypothesis is operationalised it is testable which is a requirement of hypotheses in psychological research.
An example of a non-falsifiable hypothesis is "leprechauns always find the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow."
There are different types of hypotheses that researchers can propose when carrying out research.
The following research scenario will be used to show examples of each type of hypothesis that the researchers could use.
"A research team was investigating to see if memory performance is affected by depression."
The identified independent variable is the severity of depression scores and the dependent variable is the scores from a memory performance task.
The null hypothesis predicts that the results will show no or little effect. The null hypothesis is a predictive statement that researchers use when it is thought that the IV will not influence the DV.
An alternative hypothesis is a predictive statement that is used when it is thought that the IV will influence the DV.
This is also known as a one-tailed test
Directional signs, pointing in two opposite directions, flaticon.com/premium-icon
The directional alternative hypothesis states how the IV will influence the DV, identifying a specific direction, such as if there will be an increase or decrease in the observed results.
Let's consider a few examples of the various types of hypotheses in research.
There will be no observed difference in scores from a memory performance task between people with high- or low-depressive scores.
There will be an observed difference in scores from a memory performance task between people with high- or low-depressive scores.
People with low depressive scores will perform better in the memory performance task than people who score higher in depressive symptoms.
The three types of hypotheses are:
An example of a null hypothesis in psychology is, there will be no observed difference in scores from a memory performance task between people with high- or low-depressive scores.
All researchers will likely complete the following
The above steps are used to formulate testable hypotheses.
The formulation of a hypothesis in research is when the researcher formulates a predictive statement of what is expected to happen when testing the research question based on background research.
When formulating a null hypothesis the researcher would state a prediction that they expect to see no difference in the dependent variable when the independent variable changes or is manipulated. Whereas, when using an alternative hypothesis then it would be predicted that there will be a change in the dependent variable. The researcher can state in which direction they expect the results to go.
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