Research Hypothesis?

Hypothesis can be defined as a tentative answer to a research problem.

It is sometimes called a scientific guess work.

It can also be referred as a guess about a relationship between variables.

Hypothesis predicts the outcome of an investigation.

I’ll give you a straight forward explanation of hypothesis.

Illustration:

illustration:Let’s say you visited a hotel and spent 2days there, on the 3^rd day you checked-out, then on your way to the car park you now discovered that your mobile phone was left behind; your first action will be to quickly return to the hotel room; on getting to the room you couldn’t find the phone on the usual place (e.g. on the table), now… the next natural thing that would happen is that your mind will start hovering like a radar to remember the last place you visited, okay…. So, you are trying to remember which chair you sat on in the last 8hours or thereabout…. now this is what hypothesis does, it is a tentative answer i.e., a guess work (a scientific guess work to be precised). It’s either the phone is under the chair or on the table; it’s either it is on the bed or under the bed…

I’ll give another good example;

If you are placed between a cannibal and a snake, what is the possibility of you escaping without getting hurt?

Several things will come to play in this scenario:

1. If you move towards the cannibal for safety, he might use you for dinner and end up killing the snake anyways.
2. If you run to the snake, it might bite you and in the process the cannibal kills it and still eats you
3. If you move in a different direction the cannibal might come after you while the snake runs away due to fear
4. If you jump over the snake successfully, there is a high chance that the cannibal would come for you thereby scaring the snake; out of fear the snake may strike the cannibal.

You see, this are guess work but they are calculative, if your calculations are correct you might scale through but if not you may end up being hurt……this is exactly how hypothesis work.

After stating your hypothesis, you will still need to do some investigations or carry out statistical tabulation to arrive at a decision of whether to go in the direction of the cannibal or to the snake…

Please note:

1. To carry out a research, hypothesis formulation is necessary.
2. Hypothesis is derived from research problem and objectives of the study

Types of Hypotheses

Null Hypothesis: Null hypothesis is usually the opposite of the Alternate hypothesis.

E.g. There is no significant challenges in investing in residential property in Enugu urban

Alternative Hypothesis: This shows the positive relationship between variables.

E.g. There are significant challenges in investing in residential property in Enugu urban