STEP ONE

Decide whether to include research questions and hypotheses,
or just one or the other

As a general rule in quantitative dissertations, it is more likely that a marker would expect you to have set out hypotheses (whether research or null hypotheses) rather than quantitative research questions. However, quantitative research questions and research hypotheses are designed to accomplish different tasks, which is one reason why it can be useful to include both:

• RESEARCH QUESTIONS explain the purpose of the research. In other words, what issue or problem is the research trying answer? In terms of quantitative research questions, the type of research question (i.e., descriptive, comparative or relationship) helps to explain the purpose of the research:

  Descriptive research question
  What are the most important factors that influence the career choices of Australian university students?

  Comparative research question
  What is the difference in student performance between teaching method A and teaching method B?

  Relationship-based research question
  What is the relationship between gender and attitudes towards music piracy amongst adolescents?

• RESEARCH HYPOTHESES explain the predictions being made (or otherwise) by the researcher based on specific hypothesis statements. These hypothesis statements set out what problem or issue the research is trying to answer, as well as their directionality, which help to explain any predictions being made by the researcher. Whilst descriptive research questions are better addressed in the form of research questions, comparative and relationship-based research questions can be restated as research hypotheses, as we illustrate below:

  Comparative hypothesis
  Teaching method A will increase student performance more than teaching method B

  Relationship-based hypothesis
  Adolescent females will have more negative attitudes towards music piracy than adolescent males

If your research hypotheses build on the research questions you have set, especially if there are multiple research hypotheses used to address a single research question, we would recommend using research questions and research hypotheses. However, if this is not the case, we would recommend using hypotheses rather than research questions (NOTE: these are general rules and there is no 'law' to say that you cannot set research questions instead of hypotheses. Nonetheless, it's best to check with your supervisor if you choose not to use hypotheses).