Lesson 7: Hypothesis

A hypothesis is an assumption that is neither proven nor disproven. In the research process, a hypothesis
is made at the very beginning and the goal is to either reject or not reject the hypothesis. In order to reject or or
not reject a hypothesis, data, e.g. from an experiment or a survey, are needed, which are then evaluated using
a hypothesis test.
Usually, hypotheses are formulated starting from a literature review. Based on the literature review, you
can then justify why you formulated the hypothesis in this way.

Example hypothesis: "Men earn more than women in the same job in Austria."

How do I formulate a hypothesis?

In order to formulate a hypothesis, a research question must first be defined. A precisely formulated
hypothesis about the population can then be derived from the research question.

“SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS’ ACADEMIC STRESS, ACADEMIC MOTIVATION, AND ITS RELATIONSHIP
WITH THEIR ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE”
Specifically, the study seeks to answer the following research questions:
1. What is the level of students' academic stress?
2. What is the level of students' academic motivation?
3. What is the level of students' academic performance?
4. Is there a significant relationship between Senior High School students’ academic stress and their academic
performance?
5. Is there a significant relationship between Senior High School students’ academic motivation and their
academic performance?
Hypotheses of the study
H0: There is no significant relationship between academic stress and academic performance of Senior High
School Students.
H0: There is no significant relationship between academic motivation and academic performance of Senior
High School Students.
To test a hypothesis, it is necessary to define exactly which variables are involved and how the variables are
related. Hypotheses, then, are assumptions about the cause-and-effect relationships or the associations
between variables.

What is a variable?
A variable is a property of an object or event that can take on different values. For example, the eye color is a
variable, it is the property of the object eye and can take different values (blue, brown,...).

If you are researching in the social sciences, your variables may be:

▪ Gender
▪ Income
▪ Attitude towards environmental protection

If you are researching in the medical field, your variables may be:

▪ Body weight
▪ Smoking status
▪ Heart rate

H0: There is no significant relationship between academic stress and academic performance of Senior High
School Students.
H0: There is no significant relationship between academic motivation and academic performance of Senior
High School Students

An independent variable is the variable you manipulate or vary in an experimental study to explore its effects.
It’s called “independent” because it’s not influenced by any other variables in the study.

A dependent variable is the variable that changes as a result of the independent variable manipulation. It’s the
outcome you’re interested in measuring, and it “depends” on your independent variable.

Example:
You are studying the impact of a new teaching method on the on the students’ math achievement. Your
independent variable is the treatment/teaching methods that you directly vary between groups.

Independent Variable Dependent variable

Teaching method Students’ Math

achievement
(Traditional/flipped learning)
Test scores

Statement of the problem: The study would like to determine the effect of the flipped learning method in the
math achievement of the students. Specifically, it sought to answer the question
“Is there a significant difference in the math achievement between the students exposed to traditional
and flipped learning?
Hypothesis
H0: There is no significant difference in the math achievement between the students exposed to
traditional and flipped learning?
A good hypothesis should also be specific and clearly defined, with clearly stated predictions. A bad hypothesis, on the
other hand, is a guess or prediction that is not based on observations or is not designed to be tested through further
experimentation or observation.

Good hypothesis Prediction/testable research question

Working from home improves Employees who are allowed to work from home are less likely to quit within 2
job satisfaction. years than those who need to come to the office.

Sleep deprivation affects Students who sleep <5 hours/night don’t perform as well on exams as those
cognition. who sleep >7 hours/night.

Animals adapt to their Birds of the same species living on different islands have differently shaped
environment. beaks depending on the available food source.

Social media use causes Do teenagers who refrain from using social media for 4 weeks show
anxiety. improvements in anxiety symptoms?

Bad hypothesis 1: Diabetes is caused by witchcraft.

While this is fun to think about, it cannot be tested or proven one way or the other with clear evidence, data
analysis, or experiments. This bad hypothesis fails to meet the testability requirement.

Bad hypothesis 2: If I change the amount of food I eat, my energy levels will change.

This is quite vague. Am I increasing or decreasing my food intake? What do I expect exactly will happen to my
energy levels and why? How am I defining energy level? This bad hypothesis statement fails the clarity
requirement.

Bad hypothesis 3: Japanese food is disgusting because Japanese people don’t like tourists.

This hypothesis is unclear about the posited relationship between variables. Are we positing the relationship
between the deliciousness of Japanese food and the desire for tourists to visit? or the relationship between the
deliciousness of Japanese food and the amount that Japanese people like tourists? There is also the problematic
subjectivity of the assessment that Japanese food is “disgusting.” The problems are numerous.

What is the null and alternative hypothesis?

There are always two hypotheses that are exactly opposite to each other, or that claim the opposite.
These opposite hypotheses are called null and alternative hypothesis and are abbreviated with H0 and H1.

Null hypothesis H0:

The null hypothesis assumes that there is no difference between two or more groups with respect to a
characteristic.

Example:
Ho: There is no significant difference in the math achievement between the students exposed to
traditional and flipped learning?

Alternative hypothesis H1:

Alternative hypotheses, on the other hand, assume that there is a difference between two or more groups.

Example:
H0: There is significant difference in the math achievement between the students exposed to
traditional and flipped learning?
Non-directional hypotheses
Non-directional hypotheses test whether there is a relationship or a difference, and it does not matter in which
direction the relationship or difference goes. In the case of a difference hypothesis, this means there is a
difference between two groups, but it does not say whether one of the groups has a higher value.

▪ There is a difference between the salary of men and women (but it is not said who earns more!).
▪ There is a difference in the risk of heart attack between smokers and non-smokers (but it is not said who
has the higher risk!).

In regard to a correlation hypothesis, this means there is a relationship or correlation between two variables,
but it is not said whether this relationship is positive or negative.

▪ There is a correlation, between height and weight.

▪ There is a correlation between horsepower and fuel consumption in cars.

In both cases it is not said whether this correlation is positive or negative!

Directional hypotheses
Directional hypotheses additionally indicate the direction of the relationship or the difference. In the case of the
difference hypothesis a statement is made which group has a higher or lower value.

▪ Men earn more than women

▪ Smokers have a higher risk of heart attack than non-smokers

In the case of a correlation hypothesis, a statement is made as to whether the correlation is positive or negative.

▪ The taller a person is the heavier he is

▪ The more horsepower a car has, the higher its fuel economy

A one-sided or directional alternative hypothesis includes only values that differ in one direction from the value
of the null hypothesis.

What is the p-value?

The p-value is used to either reject or retain (not reject) the null hypothesis in a hypothesis test. If the
calculated p-value is smaller than the significance level, which in most cases is 5%, then the null hypothesis is
rejected, otherwise it is retained.
Example:

▪ The null hypothesis is that there is no difference between the salaries of men and women.
▪ Now a sample is taken with the salary of men and women. These are our observed results.
▪ We assume that the null hypothesis is true, that is, that there is no difference between the salaries of
men and women.
▪ In the observed result (sample) we now find out that men earn 150 € more per month than women.
▪ The p-value now indicates how likely it is to draw a sample in which the salary of men and women differ
by 150€ or more, even though there is no difference in the population.
▪ If the p-value is e.g. 0.04, it is only 4% likely to draw a sample of 150€ or more extreme, if there is no
difference in salary in the population.

Significance level
The significance level, also known as alpha or α, is a measure of the strength of the evidence that must
be present in your sample before you will reject the null hypothesis and conclude that the effect is statistically
significant. The researcher determines the significance level before conducting the experiment.

The significance level is the probability of rejecting the null hypothesis when it is true. For example, a significance
level of 0.05 indicates a 5% risk of concluding that a difference exists when there is no actual difference. Lower
significance levels indicate that you require stronger evidence before you will reject the null hypothesis.

Use significance levels during hypothesis testing to help you determine which hypothesis the data support.
Compare your p-value to your significance level. If the p-value is less than your significance level, you can reject
the null hypothesis and conclude that the effect is statistically significant. In other words, the evidence in your
sample is strong enough to be able to reject the null hypothesis at the population level.

Normality test
One of the most common assumptions for statistical tests is that the data used are normally distributed. For
example, if you want to run a t-test or an ANOVA, you must first test whether the data or variables are normally
distributed.

How is the normal distribution tested?

Normal distribution can be tested either analytically (statistical tests) or graphically. The most common
analytical tests to check data for normal distribution are the:

In all of these tests, you are testing the null hypothesis that your data are normally distributed. The null
hypothesis is that the frequency distribution of your data is normally distributed. To reject or not reject the null
hypothesis, all these tests give you a p-value. What matters is whether this p-value is less than or greater than
0.05.
If the p-value is less than 0.05, this is interpreted as a significant deviation from the normal distribution and it
can be assumed that the data are not normally distributed. If the p-value is greater than 0.05 and you want to
be statistically clean, you cannot necessarily say that the frequency distribution is normal, you just cannot
reject the null hypothesis.

Procedure on how to test normality distribution of data in SPSS

[Link]

Shapiro-Wilk Test of Normality

The above table presents the results from two well-known tests of normality, namely the Kolmogorov-Smirnov
Test and the Shapiro-Wilk Test. The Shapiro-Wilk Test is more appropriate for small sample sizes (< 50 samples),
but can also handle sample sizes as large as 2000. For this reason, we will use the Shapiro-Wilk test as our
numerical means of assessing normality.

We can see from the above table that for the "Beginner", "Intermediate" and "Advanced" Course Group the
dependent variable, "Time", was normally distributed. How do we know this? If the Sig. value of the Shapiro-
Wilk Test is greater than 0.05, the data is normal. If it is below 0.05, the data significantly deviate from a normal
distribution.

Normal Q-Q Plot

In order to determine normality graphically, we can use the output of a normal Q-Q Plot. If the data are normally
distributed, the data points will be close to the diagonal line. If the data points stray from the line in an obvious
non-linear fashion, the data are not normally distributed. As we can see from the normal Q-Q plot below, the
data is normally distributed