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Course: Research Methodology Topic: Hypothesis Chapter: 7th

Hypothesis:
Hypotheses bring clarity, specificity and focus to a research problem, but are not essential for a study.
Black and Champion define a hypothesis as ‘a tentative statement about something, the validity of which is usually
unknown’ (1976: 126). A proposition that is stated in a testable form and that predicts a particular relationship between two
(or more) variables.
H1: There is a significant relationship between gender and facilities. In other words, if we think that a relationship exists,
we first state it as a hypothesis and then test the hypothesis in the field. (1978: 35)
Types of Hypotheses:
1. Null Hypothesis (H0)—It is the presumption that is accepted as correct unless there is strong evidence against it.
2. Alternative Hypothesis (H1)—It is accepted when H0 is rejected.
Characteristics of Hypothesis:
1. A hypothesis should be simple, specific and conceptually clear
2. A hypothesis should be capable of verification.
3. A hypothesis should be related to the existing body of knowledge
4. A hypothesis should be operationalizable.
Hypothesis Development and Testing
Hypothesis is an assumption or claim about some characteristic of a population, which we should be able to support or reject
on the basis of empirical evidence.
Hypothesis testing is a process for choosing between different alternatives which have to be-
1. mutually exclusive 2. exhaustive.
For example: An electric bulb manufacturing company may claim that the average life of its bulbs is at least 1000 hours.
Now we will try to find out the alternatives:
The alternatives have to be mutually exclusive and exhaustive.
➢ Average life of the bulb is greater than or equal to 1000 hours.
➢ Average life of the bulb is less than 1000 hours.
Null hypothesis represents the status-quo and alternate hypothesis is the negation of the status-quo situation. One way to
ensure that null hypothesis is formulated correctly is to observe that when null hypothesis is accepted, no corrective action
is needed.
It should be noted that negation of the null hypothesis also means that some corrective action is needed to ensure that the
average life of bulbs is at least 1000 hours.
Type I and Type II Errors
While testing a hypothesis, if we reject it when it should be accepted, it amounts to Type I error.
On the other hand, accepting a hypothesis when it should be rejected amounts to Type II error.
Generally, any attempt to reduce one type of error results in increasing the other type of error.
The only way to reduce both types of errors is to increase the sample size.