Formulation of Hypothesis

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 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.

• First, we will discuss the importance of hypotheses in research.
• We will then cover formulating hypotheses in research, including the steps in the formulation of hypotheses in research methodology.
• We will provide examples of hypotheses in research throughout the explanation.
• Finally, we will delve into the different types of hypotheses in research.

Importance of hypothesis in research

The purpose of including hypotheses in psychology research is:

• to provide a summary of what the researcher is and how investigating a theory and what is expected to be found
• to provide an answer to the research question

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 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

Steps in the formulation of hypothesis in research methodology

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

• Investigating background research in the area of interest
• Formulating or investigating a theory
• Identify how the theory will be tested and what the researcher expects to find based on relevant, previously published scientific works

The above steps are used to formulate testable hypotheses.

Formulation of 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.

Formulating hypotheses in research

When formulating hypotheses, things that should be considered by researchers are:

• The hypotheses should be written as predictive statements regarding the nature of the relationship between the IV and DV
  • From the hypothesis, the researcher should be able to predict what they expect to find from the results of the study. The researcher could state that they expect to see a difference or no difference. Occasionally, researchers may theorise what changes are expected to be observed (two-tailed alternative hypothesis).
• When the hypothesis has no clear direction, it is considered a non-directional hypothesis, predicting there will be a relationship but the research does not specify what type of relationship.
• When the hypothesis has a clear direction, it is considered a directional hypothesis, predicting the results and the type of relationship they will have.

• Background research - hypotheses should not be based on guesswork. Instead, researchers should use previously published research work to predict what the expected outcome of the study will be

• The independent variable (IV) should be identified

  IV is what the experimenter manipulates to see if it affects the DV.

• The dependent variable (DV) should be identified

  DV is the variable that is being measured after the IV has been manipulated or after it changes during the experiment.

• The variables should be operationalised. This means that the researchers need to define how each variable (both IV and DV) will be measured. For example, memory may be measured using a memory performance test, such as the Mini-Mental Status Examination.

  When a hypothesis is operationalised it is testable which is a requirement of hypotheses in psychological research.

• The hypotheses need to be falsifiable. Other researchers need to be able to replicate the research using the same variables to see whether they can verify the results. The hypothesis needs to be written in a way that is falsifiable, meaning the hypothesis can be tested using the scientific method to see if it is true

  An example of a non-falsifiable hypothesis is "leprechauns always find the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow."

• The hypotheses should be clear. They are usually only a sentence long and should only consist of the details that have been summarised above. A good hypothesis should not include irrelevant information.

Types of hypotheses in research

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

• The alternative hypothesis - This is also known as a non-directional, two-tailed hypothesis.

• There is another type of alternative hypothesis called the directional hypothesis. A non-directional hypothesis states there is a difference but no direction is given.

  This is also known as a one-tailed test

Directional signs, pointing in two opposite directions, flaticon.com/premium-icon