aims and hypothesis

• what’s an aim

  a general statement of what the researcher intends to investigate
• what’s a hypothesis 


  a clear precise testable statement that states the relationship between the variables to be investigated
• what’s a directional hypothesis 


  states the direction of the difference or relationship
• what’s a non directional hypothesis 


  does not state a direction
• what’s a null hypothesis 


  states there will be no difference between variables being tested
• when do researchers use a directional and non directional hypothesis? 


  directional: when previous research suggests a particular outcome

  non directional: when there is no previous research or findings
• what’s the independent variable 


  the things the experimenter deliberately changes
• what’s the dependant variable

  what is being measured
• what’s operationalising of variables 


  clearly defining the variables in terms of how they can be measured
• • the change in iv will affect the dv
  • if the only thing that has affected the dv is the iv the experiment has demonstrated cause and effect