Hypothesis Formulation Once you have identified you research question, it is time to formulate your hypothesis. While the research question is broad and includes all the variables you want your study to consider, the hypothesis is a statement that specific relationship you expect to find from your examination of these variables. When formulating the hypothesis(es) for your study, there are a few things you need to keep in mind. Good hypotheses meet the following criteria: 1) Identify the independent and dependent variables to be studied. 2) Specify the nature of the relationship that exists between these variables. 3) Simple (often referred to as parsimonious). It is better to be concise than to be long-winded. It is also better to have several simple hypotheses than one complicated hypothesis. 4) Does not include reference to specific measures. 5) Does not refer to specific statistical procedures that will be used in analysis. 6) Implies the population that you are going to study. 7) Is falsifiable and testable.
As indicated above, it is better to have several simple hypotheses than one complex one. However, it is also a good idea to limit the number of hypotheses you use in a study to six or fewer. Studies that address more hypotheses than six will often be too time consuming to keep participants interested, and uninterested participants do not take the importance of their responses as seriously. Another advantage to limiting the number of formal hypotheses you formulate is that too many can make the discussion section of your paper very hard to write. It is important to remember that you do not have to have a formal hypothesis to justify all comparisons and statistical procedures you might use. For instance, it is only when you start doing exploratory analysis of your data