Formalizing Ideas Into Research Hypotheses

(Research Hypothesis) Formalizing Ideas Into   Research Hypotheses

As you conduct your literature search, you will want to pay close attention to the organizing principles that form the basis of behavioral research. These principles include laws, theories, and research hypotheses. As we will see in the next sections, once you have read a great deal about your topic area, you will begin to develop more specifi c ideas about what you want to study, and you will be ready to begin formalizing your interests into a specifi c research hypothesis that you will test. 

Laws

Principles that are so general as to apply to all situations are known as laws. There are well-known laws in the physical sciences, such as the law of gravity and the laws of thermodynamics, but there currently are very few universally accepted laws within the behavioral sciences. This is partly because behavioral science research has not progressed as far as that in the natural sciences and partly because it is more difficult to specify laws of social behavior. In any case, because laws are such general principles and are considered so only because their validity has already been well established, they are themselves rarely directly subjected to scientific test. 

Theories

The next step down from laws in the hierarchy of organizing principles is the theory. A theory is an integrated set of principles that explains and predicts many, but not all, observed relationships within a given domain of inquiry. Because theories integrate many observations into a relatively simple whole and yet are not too general to be tested, they form the basic building blocks of science. Existing theories (or ones that you develop) may help provide you with ideas for developing your own research. The process of using a theory to generate specifi c ideas that can be tested through research is known as the deductive method. 

The Components of a Good Theory. Consider, for instance, the stage theory of cognitive development, which states that children pass through a series of cognitive stages and that children cannot perform certain activities until the appropriate cognitive stage has been reached (Piaget, 1952). This is an extremely useful theory in human development because it can be applied to many different content areas and can be tested in many different ways. 

         The utility of a theory can be judged on the basis of how well it meets some fundamental requirements. First, good theories are general, meaning that they summarize many different outcomes. Second, they are parsimonious, meaning that they provide the simplest possible account of those outcomes. The stage theory of cognitive development meets both of these requirements. It can account for developmental changes in behavior across a wide variety of domains, and yet it does so parsimoniously—by hypothesizing a simple set of cognitive stages. 

        Third, good theories provide ideas for future research. For instance, the stage theory suggested many different types of experiments in many different areas that have since been used to study cognitive development. Research has demonstrated, for instance, that children cannot conserve volume or mass until they have reached an appropriate stage of development (Piaget, 1952), that they learn about what it means to be a boy or a girl in stages (Stangor & Ruble, 1987), and that moral reasoning follows a stage sequence (Kohlberg, 1969). Taken together, these different research fi ndings, all predicted by the stage theory, provide overall support for the theory. 

           Fourth, good theories are falsifiable (Popper, 1959), which means that the variables of interest can be adequately measured and the relationships between the variables that are predicted by the theory can be shown through research to be incorrect. The stage theory of cognitive development is falsifi able because the stages of cognitive reasoning can be measured and because if research discovers that children learn new tasks gradually, rather than quickly, as they pass into a new stage, then the theory will be shown to be incorrect. In general, when a theory is falsifi ed, it will be replaced by a new, more accurate theory. 

Judgment of a Theory’s Utility. Some theories meet some of the requirements for a good theory but not others. The theory of social reinforcement, for instance, proposes that people will be more likely to subsequently perform a behavior after they have been rewarded for performing it. This is an extremely important theory because it summarizes much of everyday social behavior in a parsimonious manner and also provides ideas for testing it. For instance, the theory would predict that children would more likely share their toys if their mother praises them for doing so. 

        However, the defi nitions of “reward” in social behavior involve both external factors, such as money and praise, and internal factors, such as mood improvement and guilt reduction. Because internal factors are diffi cult to defi ne and measure, a supporter of social learning theory could easily argue that when a behavior occurs, it has been rewarded, and that when a behavior does not occur, it has not been rewarded. For instance, when a person helps a complete stranger escape from a burning building, there is obvious cost to the helper, but the potential reward is not clear. But a supporter of social reinforcement theory would say that the reward was something such as “feeling good about helping” or “avoiding guilt if one didn’t help.” In this case, the problem is that the theory is not falsifi able because the variable “reward” is defi ned as “that which increases the occurrence of behavior.” Theories in which the variables cannot be measured or in which the variables are vague enough that they cannot provide information to falsify the theory are called tautological. No single theory is able to account for all behavior in all cases. Rather, a theory is inevitably found to be limited in that it makes accurate predictions in some situations or for some people but not in other situations or for other people. As a result, there is a constant interplay between theory and data: existing theories are modifi ed on the basis of collected data, and the new modifi ed theories then make new predictions which are tested by new data, and so forth. In time a theory will either change so much that it becomes a new and different theory or be entirely replaced by another, more accurate theory. A theory survives only to the extent that it is “good enough” and no currently known alternative theory is better. When a better theory is found, it will replace the old one. This is part of the accumulation of scientific knowledge.

The Research Hypothesis

Although good theories are designed to be falsifi able, they are usually  framed too broadly to be tested in a single experiment. Therefore, scientists use a more precise statement of the presumed relationship among specifi c parts of the theory—a research hypothesis—as a basis for correlational and experimental research (remember that relationships among variables are never tested in descriptive research). Because research hypotheses are the most basic tool of the scientist, we will be spending a major part of this book discussing their development and testing. 

         A research hypothesis can be defined as a specific and falsifiable prediction regarding the relationship between or among two or more variables. The research hypothesis states the existence of a relationship between the variables of interest and the specifi c direction of that relationship. For instance: 

•  Observing violent television shows will cause increased aggressive behavior. 
•  Participating in psychotherapy will reduce anxiety. 
•  Smoking marijuana will reduce the ability to learn new information. 

         As we will discuss more fully in Chapters 10 and 11, in experimental research designs the research hypothesis involves the relationship between an independent variable (the experimental manipulation) and a dependent variable (the variable that is caused by the independent variable). The independent variable is created by the experimenter through the experimental manipulation, and the research hypothesis is that the manipulated independent variable causes changes in the measured dependent variable. Causal relationships can be depicted graphically using straight arrows that point in one direction:

In correlational research designs, both the independent variable and the dependent variable are measured. Furthermore, because it is not possible to state the causal relationships between variables in correlational designs, the terms independent variable and dependent variable are sometimes replaced with the terms predictor variable and outcome variable, respectively. The research hypothesis is that there is a correlation between the variables, and this correlation is shown using a curved line with arrows that point in both directions:

Because the research hypothesis is only a guess and is designed to be falsifiable, its validity must be tested. Moreover, there are many ways to measure the variables of interest and many ways to test the relationship between them. The major focus of this book is on how to develop research designs and test research hypotheses.

Doing a Literature Search

(Research Hypothesis) Doing a Literature Search

Because all good research is designed to build on and expand existing knowledge, it would be wasteful for a scientist to begin working on a project without knowing what others working in the area have already done. This is why scientists receive years of training in which they learn both methods of conducting research and the current content of knowledge in their fi eld. It is also why scientists spend a lot of time reading about research in scientifi c journals and participating at conferences where research is presented. In short, scientists are keenly aware that their research will make a contribution to the fi eld only if it is based on and adds signifi cantly to what is already known. 

         Once you have begun to develop an idea for your research, you should perform a literature search to locate the research articles and books that contain reports of previous research (Reed & Baxter, 1983). Conducting a literature  search before beginning a research project is essential because it helps prevent duplication of effort and may help you avoid problems that others have had. The literature search is also a great time-saver because it can provide you with invaluable information about how to measure the variables you are interested in and what research designs will be most useful to you. There is so much literature in behavioral science journals and books that no matter what your research idea is, others will probably have done something relevant to it. This does not mean that your idea is not important—in fact, it suggests that others have also found it to be so.

Locating Sources of Information

There are many sources of research literature relevant to your interest. Probably the most important sources of information are research reports that contain complete descriptions of the collected data and the data analyses. These research reports are known as primary sources and usually appear in professional journals. Secondary sources are documents that contain only summaries or interpretations of the research reports rather than a complete description of them. Secondary sources include textbooks, books written by a single author, and edited books that contain a collection of chapters on a single topic, each contributed by a different author. Some journals, such as Psychological Bulletin and the Annual Review of Psychology, also publish primarily secondary-source articles.

           In most cases, the sources that you locate can be found online through the databases maintained by university libraries. If the source is not online, you will have to fi nd it on the shelves of your library using the call number of the book or journal. If your library does not subscribe to the journal or have the book on its shelves, you may be able to get it through the interlibrary loan system. You may also wish to use the Web to get ideas. It is likely that no matter what your topic is, you will find one or more Internet sites that contain data and other relevant information about it. This material might include newsletters, unpublished research papers and reports, and online books and brochures. These sites may be particularly helpful for getting new ideas and for seeing what other people interested in the problem are doing. 

           One potential problem with web sources, however, is that the information  may not be very objective. There are many websites that espouse views of the authors without much fact checking or verifiability. Thus, some web information may be based primarily on intuition rather than on data or facts. It is up to you, as an informed consumer of information, to do the very best you can to determine the validity of the information in the sites that you find. Some sources, such as www.scholar.google.com are reputable sources of academic information. And many academic journals can now be found on websites at your university. Other sites may be less valid. As you attempt to determine the validity of the information on the sites you fi nd, keep in mind the distinction between primary and secondary source information, and ask yourself about the likely source, credibility, and currency of the site. Is the information based on scientifi c research or is it more value-based? Both types of information can be informative, but a good scientist attempts to determine the difference. If you do decide to use information from web-based material, be sure to accurately report the source of this information in the Reference section of the manuscript.

         Other valuable sources of information are experts in the fi eld in which you are interested. An instructor may be a good source in this regard or may be able to direct you to an even more knowledgeable expert. Experts can also be useful in directing you to specifi c journals that are known to contain the best published research in your topic area. Do not be shy about contacting experts. Although they may be busy, scientists are usually happy to put their knowledge to use.

Conducting the Search

Generally, a literature search will be most efficient if it (1) starts at a broad, general level (secondary sources) and then progresses to more specific levels (primary sources) and (2) starts with the newest available information and uses this information to progress backward toward previous research.

          One approach to beginning a literature search in an area that you do not know much about is to use one or more introductory textbooks in that field as the most general secondary sources. Choose a chapter in which your topic is discussed, and read the chapter carefully. Although using secondary sources can be a time-saver because they generally provide more information in fewer pages, it is absolutely essential that you also consult primary sources in your literature search. Secondary sources may not adequately summarize the primary- source research. Journal articles are also more complete and objective than secondary sources because (as we will discuss in Appendix A), they have passed a rigorous review process.

          After you have begun to focus on a topic area, you will want to move from general information toward more specifi c treatments of the topic area by reading book chapters and journal articles. As you begin to move deeper into your topic, do not be too infl exible about what you are interested in. It is best to keep an open mind at this point because you may fi nd that your research idea has already been well tested or that another research idea interests you more than the one you began with. Remember that your goal is not only to read about the research but also to use the research to develop and refi ne ideas for your own research. Being open-minded is important in all stages of the research process, especially because research that originally seemed irrelevant may later turn out to be valuable to you when you have a broader idea of the scope of the topic you are studying. The literature search should be used to help you modify and refi ne your

original ideas. 

         Investigating Computer Databases. The most efficient way to find primary sources relevant to your topic is through the use of a computer-aided literature search. Behavioral science databases are provided by most libraries and are available online. The databases contain summaries (called abstracts) of thousands of journal articles and book chapters. Reading these abstracts will give you a basic idea of whether the material will provide information you are interested in, and where to locate a journal article or book chapter if you decide to read it. 

         The most relevant database in psychology is PsycINFO®, which indexes  almost 2 million references to psychological literature published from 1887 to the present. Many of these articles will be online in your library. The American Psychological Association website (www.apa.org) has more information about this database. Similar databases are found in other fi elds. For instance, SocialSciIndex® is a sociological database containing abstracts from over 1,600 journals. Medline® indexes journals in the areas of health care, environmental health, and behavioral medicine, and ERIC® is a collection of databases including those related to education and training. 

         Another useful database is the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI). Although the normal search procedure is to use the reference lists of newer journal articles to locate older articles, SSCI allows you to work the other way around. If you have an older article that you have found to be very important to your topic, you can use SSCI to fi nd other, more recent articles that have cited that article in their references.

Using Keywords Effectively. Before beginning your search in a database, you will need to have a few keywords to use in locating your materials. Most of your keywords will be of subjects, such as learning, memory, stress, or paranoia. However, you can also use author names or journal titles as keywords. You can develop your own keywords on the basis of your interests, but if you are not sure about what keywords to use, consult the Thesaurus—an index of all of the keywords used in the database. Ask your reference librarian for help if you are unsure how to proceed. Once you have entered a keyword, the computer checks the titles and abstracts of all of the books or articles in the database for the occurrence of that word. One problem is that some keywords are so broad that there are  far too many articles using them. For instance, I recently searched PsycINFO® using the keyword learning and found over 182,000 journal articles listed! The database thus allows you to combine keywords to make your target  more specific. For instance, when I combined the keywords learning and children, the list was reduced to about 31,735 articles, and a search for

learning and children and television produced only 278 articles. Finally, I indicated that I wanted only articles from the years 2000–2002, and this reduced the output to a manageable list of 28 articles. You can also limit

your search to include only journal articles, to include only certain authors, and (in case your foreign language skills aren’t that good) to include only articles in English. 

         Figure 2.1 shows the input that I gave to my search. You can see that the database is PsycINFO®, that there are three keywords—children, learning, and television—and that I have indicated to search only in the years 2000–2002. Figure 2.2 presents the first listing that came out of my search, and you can see the type of information it contains. It includes the title and authors of the article, as well as their university affi liations. Also included is information about the journal in which the article is published and the abstract. The listing also allows me to see whether the article is available in my library and whether it is available online. In this case, the full text of the article turned out to be available,  and I could go right to reading it. 

         Using the keyword system will get you started, but it is only the beginning of your literature search. As you read journal articles, you will fi nd that those articles contain other relevant articles in their reference sections. Working backward through the reference lists of the articles you read will allow you to fi nd many new articles that did not appear in the initial keyword search. To adequately prepare a research topic for investigation, you must do an extensive search of the literature, which will take quite a bit of time. Keep in mind that you can often do a large part of the preparation for your research project at this point by taking good notes or making copies of the articles and by thinking about how these references will relate to your fi nal report. 

Using Abstracts to Select Important Documents. Once you have developed a smaller list of articles relevant to your area of interest, you will begin to read their abstracts to determine if the articles may be of interest to you. As you read through journal abstracts, you will probably fi nd that there are certain authors who have published frequently in your topic area. These are the scientists who have made major contributions to the literature, and you may wish to locate their contributions by entering their names as keywords. 

       Remember that it is important to read at least some of the articles that you have located. It is not suffi cient to just read the abstracts, because they are too brief to give you a complete understanding of the research.

Getting Ideas

(Research Hypothesis)Getting Ideas

As you can well imagine, there are plenty of topics to study and plenty of approaches to studying those topics. For instance, my colleagues within the  Psychology Department at the University of Maryland study such diverse topics as:

 Anxiety in children 

The interpretation of dreams 

The effects of caffeine on thinking 

How birds recognize each other 

How praying mantises hear 

How people from different cultures react differently in negotiation 

The factors that lead people to engage in terrorism

 The point is, there are a lot of things to study! 

      You may already be developing such ideas for your research projects. As with most things based on creative and original thinking, these ideas will not come to you overnight. For the best scientists, research is always in the back of their minds. Whether they are reading journal articles, teaching classes, driving in the car, or exercising, scientists are continually thinking about ways to use research to study the questions that interest them. Good behavioral scientists are always alert to their experiences and ready to apply those experiences to their research. 

        Because there are so many things to study, you may think it would be easy to come up with research ideas. On the contrary, informative research ideas are hard to come by. For instance, although you may be interested in studying depression, nurturance, memory, or helping, having an idea of a research interest is only a very preliminary fi rst step in developing a testable research idea. Before you can begin your research project, you must determine what aspects of your topic you wish to focus on and then refi ne these interests into a specifi c research design. And for your ideas to result in an accumulation of knowledge, they must be informed by past research. This is going to take time and require a lot of thought on your part. 

          Scientists develop their ideas about what to study in a number of different ways, and in the next sections we will consider some methods for getting ideas.1 As you read this section, keep in mind the types of research that we discussed in Chapter 1. You may want to begin your search for ideas by determining whether you are more interested in a basic research project or in a specifi c applied question. And you will want to think about whether your research question is best tested using a descriptive, a correlational, or an experimental research design.

Solving Important Real-World Problems

Many behavioral scientists develop their research programs around their concerns with human problems. For instance, behavioral scientists have studied how to improve children’s reading skills, how to alleviate stress in corporate managers, how to promote volunteering, and how to reduce aggression among gang members. Other scientists have studied methods for reducing risky behavior such as unprotected sex and cigarette smoking. Still others have studied the effectiveness of psychotherapy or how juries make decisions. Thus, one way to get ideas for research is to develop an applied research project that has the goal of producing a better understanding of the causes of, or potential solutions to, everyday problems. 

Using Observation and Intuition 

          Because much behavioral research involves the study of people in their everyday lives, it is often possible to develop research ideas on the basis of intuition or hunches, which are themselves based on observation of everyday behavior. Getting ideas about the relationships among variables by observing specifi c facts is known as the inductive method. In this approach, your own curiosity becomes the source of your ideas. For instance, you may have noticed that several friends of yours have had trouble developing satisfactory romantic relationships. You may have developed a theory about why these particular people have this particular behavioral problem, and you may want to test this idea in a research project. As we have seen in Chapter 1, it is useful to test hunches about behavior because those hunches often “feel” more right to us than they actually turn out to be. Only by subjecting our hunches to systematic investigation can we be sure of their validity. Some important scientifi c ideas have been developed through observation. For instance, Sigmund Freud developed his theory of personality by carefully observing the patients in his clinical practice. In a similar way, Jean Piaget developed his theory of cognitive development in children by watching

the development of his own children. 

        Although using observation and intuition has the potential of producing new ideas and approaches, there is also a possible danger to this approach. Studies that are based on intuition alone but do not relate to existing scientifi c knowledge may not advance the field very far. Consider a research project designed to test the idea that people learn more in a class taught by left-handed teachers than in a class taught by right-handed teachers. In the long run, such research could make a contribution to science by linking brain symmetry and creativity to teaching effectiveness. But, the results of a single study testing this prediction will probably not make much of a  contribution to the larger body of scientific knowledge because there is no existing explanation for why a left-handed instructor should be better than a right-handed instructor other than the hunch of the person who developed the idea.  

          Although you may use your observations of everyday behavior to generate research ideas, or develop your research around solutions to a practical social problem, you should try to link your research to the fi ndings from other studies investigating the same concepts. A study concerning creative thinking will be more useful if it is related to existing research about creativity, even if the goal of the study is to demonstrate that the existing research has drawn incorrect conclusions or is incomplete. The more links you can draw between your research and existing research, the greater is the likelihood that your research will make an important contribution to the field.

Using Existing Research

         The previous discussion has perhaps already suggested to you that I think that the best way to generate research ideas is by reading about and studying existing scientific research and then using this existing knowledge to generate new research ideas and topics. Although basing your research ideas on already existing research may seem to limit the contribution that your project can make, this is not the case. In fact, research that is based on or related to previous research fi ndings tends to advance science more rapidly because it contributes to the accumulation of a unifi ed and integrated body of knowledge. Our substantial knowledge about topics such as the causes of prejudice or the development of reading skills in children exists precisely because of the cumulative work of hundreds of investigators who have conducted research that built on previously conducted research.

 Finding Limiting Conditions. Because every research project is limited in some way or another, the goal of most research is to expand on or improve existing research. One useful strategy for developing research ideas is to consider the potential limiting conditions of previous research. For instance, for many years people believed that women were more likely to conform to the opinions of others than men were. Only when scientists began to consider the types of tasks that had been used in conformity research was a basic limiting condition found. Previous research had relied to a large extent on topics (such as football and baseball) in which men were more knowledgeable than women. However, subsequent research demonstrated that the original conclusion was too broad. This research showed that women do conform more than men, but only when the topic is one about which women believe that men have more knowledge than they do (Eagly & Chravala, 1986). If the topic is one in which women believe they are more knowledgeable (for instance, fashion design), then men are found to conform more than women. In this case, research assessing the limiting conditions of existing fi ndings made a signifi cant contribution by developing a new explanation for a phenomenon. A finding that had previously been explained in terms of differences between men and women was now explained in terms of differences in knowledge about the topic.

Explaining Conflicting Findings. Another strategy for developing research ideas is to attempt to explain confl icting fi ndings in a research area. In many cases, some studies testing a given idea show one pattern of data, whereas other studies do not show that pattern. And some studies may even show the opposite pattern. Research that can account for these discrepancies can be extremely useful. One classic example of this approach occurred in the 1960s when Robert Zajonc (1965) noted that some studies had demonstrated that tasks such as bicycle riding or jogging were performed better in the presence of others, whereas other studies showed that tasks such as solving mathematical problems were usually solved more effi ciently when people were alone. There was no known explanation for these differences.  

            Zajonc proposed that being with others increased psychological arousal and that arousal amplifi ed the “dominant” or most likely response in a given setting. Because the dominant response was usually the correct response on easy or well-learned tasks (such as jogging) but the incorrect response on diffi cult or poorly learned tasks (such as math problems), the presence of others might either increase or decrease performance depending on task difficulty. This became a very important principle in social psychology, and the findings have been confirmed in many different experiments. Zajonc’s research was particularly valuable because it was able to account in a consistent way for what had previously appeared to be inconsistent research findings. 

         In short, because existing research provides so many ideas for future research, it is very important to be aware of what other research has been done in an area. Indeed, one of the most important qualities of a good scientist is an open mind. Careful and creative analysis of existing research can produce many important ideas for future research projects.

Developing the Research Hypothesis

Developing the Research

Hypothesis

As we have seen in Chapter 1, this book concerns the scientifi c study of behavior. In this chapter, we will begin our investigation of the research process by considering the initial stages in conducting scientific research, including how scientists get their ideas for research and how they conduct a background literature review to see what research has already been conducted on their topic. We will also consider the principles that are used to organize research—laws, theories, and research hypotheses. Because research hypotheses are the most basic tool of the scientist, we will be spending a major part of this book discussing their development and testing, and this chapter will provide an important background for the chapters to come.