Research Hypothesis

A research hypothesis is a specific, clear, and testable proposition or predictive statement about the possible outcome of a scientific research study based on a particular property of a population, such as presumed differences between groups on a particular variable or relationships between variables. Specifying the research hypotheses is one of the most important steps in planning a scientific quantitative research study. A quantitative researcher usually states an a priori expectation about the results of the study in one or more research hypotheses before conducting the study, because the design of the research study and the planned research design often is determined by the stated hypotheses. Thus, one of the advantages of stating a research hypothesis is that it requires the researcher to fully think ...