Constructing Research Questions and Hypotheses from the Objectives

After thoroughly reviewing the study's background and problem statement, the researcher should set the research goal or aim. It enables the researcher to be mindful of and adhere to the limitations of the research design, literature review, investigated data, and subsequent data analysis techniques. Establishing a clear research goal helps maintain focus and prevent deviation from the problem to be investigated (Creswell & Poth, 2018). There are some factors in defining the research goal listed as follows:

1. Genuine interest in your area

   1. Your research goal should interest you now and in the future.

   2. You should consider whether you are in the right programme if you cannot find anything that interests you.

2. Familiarity with the field

   1. Avoid too much theoretical stuff.

   2. Choose areas you've studied recently to avoid steep learning curves (Maxwell, 2013).

3. Time

   1. Consider how much time you can invest in your research.

   2. As many things may go wrong during your research, you should always need more time than you thought you would.

4. Finance

   1. You need to think about your budget as soon as possible.

   2. You may end up incurring high costs and finding it difficult to do the background reading just to find articles or research data.

5. Current research and policies

   1. Consider the current state of research in your field or policies.

   2. Avoid duplicating what someone else has already done many times.

      1. You should try to reproduce results published in different contexts.

6. Access to information

   1. Think about how you get your data.

   2. Avoid difficulties or impossibilities in obtaining information, such as examination scores or private data, from individuals.

A. Research Purpose

The research goal should be divided into two distinct sections: the purpose of the study and the research objectives. The research objectives are more explicit, detailed, and strongly articulated. It should be clearly articulated and directly tied to the variables found throughout the investigation; unlike the study's purpose, the statement is more general, outlining its aim (Yin, 2018). For example, the purpose can be identifying relationships between tools and student achievement (Bryman, 2016). Let's take a look at the following purpose of the study:

1. This study aims to investigate the implementation of WeCWI as the theoretical framework for developing a web-based instructional platform.

Specifically, the research is conducted to fulfil the following objectives:

1. To investigate the teachers' perceptions of implementing WeCWI.

2. To examine the effectiveness of WeCWI implementation based on the course learning outcomes.

3. To investigate how WeCWI is implemented at the classroom level.

4. To identify the relationship between the WeCWI-enabled instructional tool and students' achievement in the summative written test.

B. Identifying Research Objectives  Solutions

The claims that the research seeks to fulfil are known as research objectives. It provides guidelines for what the study should indicate and outlines the investigation in measurable terms. The research objectives also serve as recommendations for setting the activities required to be carried out in the research process. The scope of the study, the suggested research methodology, anticipated findings from the investigation, and the potential targeted audience should all be stated in a well-written purpose and research objectives.

a. Types

There are four types of research objectives:

1. General

   1. What is to be achieved by the study in general terms?

2. Specific

   1. What will you do in your study?

   2. Where will this study be done?

   3. What is the purpose?

3. Immediate (most of the evaluative studies)

   1. Why, when, what, whom, and how will the study be conducted?

4. Ultimate (most of the applied studies)

   1. How will the results be used to motivate program managers/policymakers to implement the recommendations from the survey?

b. How to Identify Research Objectives?

The details of the research problem you highlighted in your study should be closely tied to your research objectives. The research questions may not need to be stated in your report, but the research objectives must be mentioned so the readers can infer the research questions from your goal. Let's look at the example below:

1. Yes-or-No Questions:

   • When the research question can be answered with "yes" or "no," connecting words like whether or if are used in the research objective.

   • Additionally, a modal auxiliary such as would or could often indicate possibility or feasibility.

   • Example:

     • Objective: This research aims to determine whether drones are applicable for transporting goods.

     • Inferred Research Question: Are drones applicable for transporting goods?

2. Information Questions:

   • When the research question seeks specific information (not a yes-or-no answer), the connecting words if or whether are omitted in the objective.

   • Instead, the objective uses an infinitive phrase (e.g., to determine) or a noun phrase (e.g., the new cases).

   • Example:

     • Objective: This paper reports the survey results on new cases of COVID-19 infection in Penang.

     • Inferred Research Question: What is the number of new COVID-19 cases in Penang?

C. Constructing Research Questions  Solutions

A problem statement generates research questions and hypotheses tested using inductive and deductive approaches. Translating the research problem into a particular requirement for investigation is known as a research question. It is a query regarding a research topic that may be addressed by researching it; for example, a corporation made the following statement to define a training challenge: The purpose is to discover the best way for the firm to teach present and future workers about networked personal computers. The following research questions were generated from this statement:

1. How acquainted are staff with the different computer software applications?

2. What are employees' feelings about these software packages?

3. Is there a difference in computer expertise between men and women?

4. Is there a difference in computer usage among users in different departments?

A research question must be far more specific than a research objective by dividing it into several sub-questions. One way to formulate useful sub-questions is to frame "Wh" questions related to the study. Review the crucial characterisation, justification, and exploration for more specific "What?" or "To what extent..." sub-questions. Asking "Why?" questions helps demonstrate the value of the knowledge, ensuring that your work is pertinent to the topic. The sub-questions "How?" "Where?" and "When?" show the viability of your research.

The research questions should answer the purpose in general and the objectives in specific. To answer the sub-questions, you need to consider how realistic your ideas are, review the key factors and variables, and think about how sure your research is valid. For instance, if you were researching secondary school kids' motivation, you might examine intrinsic, extrinsic, integrative, and instrumental motivations. Typically, one research question suffices for a single research objective.

a. Criteria

Effective research topics should be realistic, clear, significant, and ethical. Feasibility guarantees that the research can be adequately explored in terms of time, effort, and resources. The meaning of the keywords in the clear research questions is generally understood and accepted easily. Significant studies are worth looking into since they will advance human understanding and welfare.

By considering ethical issues, the research will not cause bodily or psychological harm to people, the environment, or the surrounding community. To formulate an excellent research question, take into account the following:

1. Be clear and avoid jargon (Flick, 2018).

2. Be straightforward but not simplistic.

3. Be well-structured without abstractions.

4. Be detailed without wordy clauses and caveats.

5. Be precise, specific, and contextualised (Flick, 2018), but not broad and vague.

b. Categories and Types

There are two categories, and each category has three types of research objectives:

1. Quantitative

   1. Exploratory

      1. Understand more about a topic.

   2. Predictive

      1. Wonder about the future outcome of an action.

   3. Interpretive

      1. Makes sense of shared experiences and attributes meaning to various phenomena.

2. Qualitative

   1. Descriptive

      1. Seek to explain when, where, why, or how something occurred.

   2. Comparative

      1. Compare one occurrence with another.

   3. Relationship-based

      1. Know how one variable affects or influences another.

c. How to Formulate the Research Questions?

Each possible research question must be tested to determine whether it is feasible. Thus, you need to get down to a question you can answer. Before committing to a research question, check the available literature and resources. Consider the practicalities of your work and ensure that your research is manageable. Think deliberately about what new information your readers will learn from your research topic. Consider also how you can collect data and evidence and spend some time exploring your ideas to prevent finding yourself at a dead end.

The research question is the foundation for planning and carrying out the study, even if it is rarely included in the final report. After narrowing your attention to a certain study area, create a question that focuses on a particular facet of the area of interest; for example, consider a researcher who wants to learn more about how industrial pollution affects the local plant life. In that instance, he or she might ask a query similar to this:

1. Question

   1. How does grain output respond to higher levels of sulfuric acid in the atmosphere?

The same subject might be covered by a different question if phrased another way:

1. Question

   1. Does the grain output significantly decline when the amount of sulfuric acid in the air is elevated?

D. Formulating Research Hypotheses  Solutions

Problem statement identification aims to clearly explain the research questions and formulate well-defined hypotheses. After stating the problem statement and examining the literature, the quantitative researcher is ready to formulate a hypothesis. It is an unverified claim or assumption that tentatively explains specific facts or events, which is also a powerful tool in scientific inquiry. It enables researchers to relate theory to observation and observation to theory. Below are some characteristics of a good hypothesis:

1. It must be consistent with the existing body of knowledge.

2. It must be reasonable based on the consequences implied deductively or inductively.

3. It must state the expected relationship between variables.

4. It must be testable to be proven true or false.

5. It must be stated as simply and concisely as possible.

The terms research questions and hypotheses are interchangeable. Both express relationships; however, research questions are in the form of queries, whereas hypotheses are declarative. One significant distinction is that hypotheses are often more precise than research questions. Hypotheses are empirically testable assertions. Here is an example of a hypothesis: Graduates with better results will be given greater employment opportunities.

When conducting formal research, it is vital to create a statement of expected results, referred to as the hypothesis. The hypothesis is a potential answer to the research question. For instance, a hypothesis based on the inquiry might be That Grain production is unaffected by abnormally high levels of sulfuric acid in the environment. Writing research questions as hypotheses has pros and cons.

1. Pros: 

   1. Writing a hypothesis compels the researcher to think more thoroughly about the study's potential solutions/outcomes.

      1. It also gives readers a clear image of what the researcher intends to accomplish.

   2. Restating a research question as a hypothesis allows one to determine whether or not a connection is being studied.

      1. If not, there may be a need to create one.

2. Cons:

   1. The researcher may knowingly or subconsciously be prejudiced if the study topic is stated as a hypothesis.

      1. Researchers frequently organise processes or modify data to get the intended result.

   2. Focusing on a specific theory can lead to losing sight of other components or interactions that may contribute to the phenomenon.

a. Purposes

A hypothesis can also be as simple as an informed guess or prediction based on the connection of two or more factors. It is analogous to proposing a feasible answer to the research problem. Researchers typically formulate research questions as hypotheses so that they may be empirically tested. In other words, they may be tested using research methods such as surveys and observations. If the forecast is empirically correct, the research can confirm it. Below are the purposes of the hypothesis:

1. It brings together related information, enabling the researcher to make a tentative claim or assumption about the relationship between the variables in the study.

2. It stimulates a research endeavour to accumulate new knowledge based on the proposed tentative explanations of phenomena.

3. It provides the researcher with a relational statement that is directly testable in a study.

4. It guides the research by identifying a specific relationship between variables and determining the nature of the data required to test the proposition.

5. It provides a framework for reporting the study's findings and conclusions.

b. Types

A hypothesis can be derived inductively from the observations of behaviour or deductively from theory or previous research findings. An inductive hypothesis is a generalisation or explanation of apparently observed relationships among behaviours and trends; for instance, students' coding learning increases their development of logical thinking skills. Here is the process for a researcher to formulate an inductive hypothesis:

1. Make observations.

2. Relate to the problem.

3. Refer to the literature for clues.

4. Make additional observations.

5. Identify the observed behaviour.

6. Formulate a hypothesis.

7. Test the hypothesis under controlled conditions.

8. Examine the relationship between the variables scientifically.

On the other hand, a deductive hypothesis is derived from theory. It generally leads to new knowledge grounded in the meaningful framework incorporated into the theory's body of knowledge. It accumulates by building on the existing body of facts and theories. A theory is a set of interrelated constructs and propositions that specify relations among variables to explain and predict phenomena. It is more general than hypotheses, which may give rise to some hypotheses to investigate in different studies. There are 12 types of hypotheses as follows:

1. Simple

   1. Predicts a correlation between two test variables: an independent and a dependent variable.

2. Complex

   1. It contains multiple variables, making the hypothesis more specific and harder to prove.

3. Null

   1. Predicts that there will be no significant relationship between the two test variables.

4. Alternative

   1. Disproves the null hypothesis.

5. Composite

   1. Does not predict the exact parameters, distribution, or range of the dependent variable.

6. Directional

   1. Predict the positivity or negativity of the effect of an intervention before the test is conducted.

7. Non-directional

   1. Does not specify the predicted direction (e.g. positivity or negativity) of the effect of the independent variable on the dependent variable.

8. Logical

   1. Philosophical questions are often untestable but have some logical basis underpinning assumptions.

9. Empirical (working)

   1. It is currently being tested using scientific analysis.

10. Statistical

    1. Utilises representative statistical models to conclude about broader populations.

11. Associative

    1. Predicts that two variables are linked but does not explore whether one variable directly impacts the other.

12. Causal

    1. Predicts that two variables are not only associated but that changes in one variable will cause changes in another.

c. How to Formulate the Research Hypotheses?

A hypothesis can be expressed in two ways: null or alternative, which can be divided into either directional or non-directional. The null hypothesis (H0) is used when a hypothesis is stated negatively and asserts no difference or relationship between variables. It assesses whether the apparent relationship between variables is genuine or likely to be due to chance. The retention of a null hypothesis indicates that the evidence is insufficient.

Alternative hypothesis (H1) or significant or substantive hypothesis shows a relationship between two or more variables. The experiment's goal is to ascertain whether or not the hypothesis is either accepted or failed to be accepted. Below are examples of null and alternative hypotheses:

1. H0: Male and female students have no difference in attitude towards programming.

2. H1: There is a difference in attitude towards programming between male and female students.

There are two types of alternative hypotheses: directional and non-directional. A directional hypothesis predicts a result in which the specific nature of the relationship the researcher hopes to find will emerge in the study; for example, treatment A is more effective than treatment B. On the other hand, a non-directional hypothesis predicts a result without implying the direction; for example, there is a difference in test scores between treatment A and treatment B.

Although hypotheses are recommended to serve several important purposes, they are not essential in all research studies. They are treated as tools in the research process, not ends in themselves. It is difficult to formulate a meaningful hypothesis if the researcher lacks insights in the following cases:

1. Scope of the problem

2. The major variables influencing the phenomenon

3. Settings in which the variables occur

Many theories are discarded after empirical testing because the evidence does not support their assumptions. If the data collected does not support the hypothesis, it does not mean the study failed. Throughout the history of scientific research, hypotheses that were not endorsed far outnumbered those that were. Unconfirmed ideas are an anticipated and important component of the scientific process that can prompt theory to be reconsidered or revised and produce new hypotheses, bringing science closer to a true explanation of the state of affairs.

Only the null hypothesis can be directly tested by statistical procedures to test a hypothesis. Testing a hypothesis involves the following steps:

1. State the relationships in operational terms that should be observed if the research hypothesis is true.

2. State the null hypothesis.

3. Select a research method that will enable the hypothesised relationship to be observed if it is there.

4. Gather and analyse the empirical data.

5. Determine whether the evidence is sufficient to reject the null hypothesis.

References

• Bryman, A. (2016). Social Research Methods (5th ed.). Oxford University Press.

• Creswell, J. W., & Poth, C. N. (2018). Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design: Choosing Among Five Approaches (4th ed.). SAGE Publications.

• Flick, U. (2018). An Introduction to Qualitative Research (6th ed.). SAGE Publications.

• Maxwell, J. A. (2013). Qualitative Research Design: An Interactive Approach (3rd ed.). SAGE Publications.

• Yin, R. K. (2018). Case Study Research and Applications: Design and Methods (6th ed.). SAGE Publications.

Let's Recall...

1. Why is it important to align research objectives with the research problem, and how can this alignment influence the overall success of the study?

2. What strategies can a researcher use to formulate testable hypotheses that address theoretical and practical literature gaps?

3. How does considering factors like time, finance, and access to information during the goal-setting phase impact the feasibility and ethical execution of a research project?

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