Writing testable hypotheses and questions

ED 510 Applications of Educational Research

Introduction
 
 

The refinement of a review of relevant literature leads inevitably to greater focus in a researcher's thinking. Eventually key ideas surface.  These are seen by a researcher as fundamental to understanding a particular research problem Fundamental ideas will eventually  take the form of concepts and variables. The concepts and variables will be brought together in the form of testable hypotheses and researchable questions.

Concepts, constructs, variables and measures
 
 

Concepts and constructs are two ideas that are difficult to distinguish in terms of their definitions.

Concepts are mental events that represent experience as ideas. But unlike the ordinary notion of an idea, concepts are not unstructured or casual. Concepts contain information that is organized according to the characteristics of an object, persons or experience. These have been represented as a mental event or concepts. The concept of motivation is organized mentally, usually in the form of the experience of a motivated person or emotional state. We think of motivation in terms of its characteristics of drive, intention and goal oriented behavior.

Constructs on the other hand are consciously developed from concepts. Constructs contain the same base as words like structure or construction. They are made with purpose and deliberation. When motivation is translated from concept to construct a researcher is deliberately thinking about how the idea of motivation can be demonstrated in a study, perhaps in terms of a task to be completed and the drive to complete that task measured. Or a researcher may be thinking of how to demonstrate motivation on a scale or survey that measures responses to items that describe motivation using individual items to explore unique aspects of the concept of motivation.

 

 
 
 

Variables are phenomena that are expected to vary in value. They vary in response to changes in other phenomena that surround the variable in context and that influence the variable. When motivation is translated into a variable a researcher has found a way to objectify motivation, to make motivation observable and something more than a subjective state reported by a participant in a study. For example, the researcher may measure drive to complete a task by setting up a situation where subjects are frustrated and are asked to find ways to solve a problem in spite of their frustration. As a variable, motivation describes how deliberately or insistently a subject strives to complete the experimental task. Likewise when a researcher defines motivation in terms of a scale or survey, the sum total of responses on the scale represent motivation in some amount or quantity.

Measures (measured variables) - When a concept or construct is reinvented as a variable it can be measured or documented in some way.

The score on a motivation scale will vary from high to low and provide a measure of motivation on that scale. When a researcher counts the number of times a frustrated subject tries once again to bypass frustrating conditions in an experimental task frequency of tries becomes a measure of motivation on a task. Both frequency of tries and score on a motivational scale take on a range of values that indicate how high or how low the variable is demonstrated.

 

We think of hypotheses as guesses about how the world works and we often confuse hypotheses with theories. Hypotheses are formal statements about the way in which two or more variables are believed to be related. When variables are measurable, then hypotheses are testable. Hypotheses are never actually proved to be true; instead they are found to be supported at a particular level of probability. When a study demonstrates that a hypothesis is probably true, what is really being demonstrated is that in a particular study, given its specific conditions, a hypothesis can be supported. The chance that such a hypothesis would be incorrect would be less than a chance occurrence.

Hypotheses must explicitly indicate the nature of the relationship between variables. These relationships are statistical and they include correlational, comparative and explanatory relationships. Usually`the language used to relate variables describes the kind of relationship that a researcher has in mind.

 

Correlational hypotheses indicate that the values of variables correspond to one another systematically-- that changes in the value of one variable is accompanied by changes in the value of the other (s). Correlational relationships may be either predictive or associational.

 

• Predictive- When prediction is expected, variables are related by verbs, such as predict, anticipate, or project
• Associational - when association is expected, variables are related by verbs, such as related to, correlated to, associated with.

Comparative hypotheses relate variables by comparison or contrast. Subjects in two or more groups are expected to differ in the scores or values they achieve when study variables are measured.

Thus males are hypothesized to differ from females in the rate of language acquisition in early childhood. Trained musicians are expected to differ in the musical characteristics they attend to when listening to a sonata from untrained listeners.

Frequently verbs and expressions such as differ, can be discriminated, are greater than, are less than are used to relate variables in comparative hypotheses.

Explanatory hypotheses relate variables in terms of cause and effect relationships. One variable is expected to cause the other. Explanatory hypotheses require that a study be designed as a true experiment: That means that there is an experimental group and a true control group, random assignment of subjects to groups, and a manipulated variable that is controlled by the experimenter.

Explanatory hypotheses useverbs and expressions such as depends on, is inferred from, influences, changes.

Finally the research question!

A research question is a hypothesis rewritten as statement. Once you have the elements of a hypothesis, you can just turn the sentence around and state it as a question.

You can see by now that a researcher has narrowed the focus of the research task in order to state the research question in such a controlled way.

How can you relate this lesson to your professional practice as an educator. What questions still remain?
 

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