To conduct a perfect study, you should usually know the basic terms used in research. For instance, your study can either follow a non-direction or directional research process. To understand this better, you need to know about the directional and non-directional hypotheses. By understanding these two hypotheses, you can easily decide what kind of study you want to conduct for your research.
This article will give you everything you need to understand about the non-directional and directional research process.
Hypothesis:
To understand the non-directional and directional research process, it is important to understand the concept of hypothesis first. A hypothesis in a study is usually a testable and precise statement of what researchers have predicted about the study’s result. It is used at the beginning of the research. It usually proposes a relationship between two variables of the study: dependent and independent. Independent variables changed during the research. At the same time, the dependent variable is the factor that measures the research. In research, a hypothesis is usually written in two ways: alternative hypothesis and null hypothesis.
If you are experimenting, then you will use the experimental hypothesis. The main requirement of a hypothesis is that it can be easily tested, and you can reject or support it. To test any hypothesis for research, you first need to make a null hypothesis by assuming that there is no relationship in a population. After this, you need to make an alternative hypothesis. You can get dissertation help online for this purpose.
Directional hypothesis:
In a directional research process, you use a directional hypothesis which contains signs like greater than (“>”) or less than (“< “). This means that in directional research, we test whether the two variables have a negative or positive impact. The directional hypothesis is also called one-tailed hypothesis. It states the way you assume the research will proceed. For example, in an educational study, we can say that students with better critical thinking and analytical skills will need less time to study for an exam than students who do not have good critical and analytical skills. In this way, your hypothesis will compare the two conditions or groups and state that one group have less or more than the other group.
A directional research process is a correlational study where the hypothesis will say whether we should expect a negative or positive correlation. The purpose of the directional hypothesis is to show the relationship between the two variables with each other. For instance, there is a positive relationship between the increase in climate change and the high carbon footprint because of the daily activities of humans related to society, economy and politics. This explains that the research will prove that more carbon emissions can lead to more change in the climate. You can also use the directional hypothesis to show a negative correlation. For instance, having many friends on Facebook can lead to lower satisfaction scores.
In a directional research process, you will predict the nature of the impact of one variable on the other variable. The directional hypothesis can help you predict the direction in which the change will occur, such as more, less, smaller, or greater. For instance, you can say in a directional studythat girls do better than the boys in social sciences. In this statement, the word “better than” shows the direction of the research.
Non-directional hypothesis:
The non-directional hypothesis is an alternative one with the not equal (“≠”) symbol. This shows that we are testing if there is some kind of relationship or not without giving specific detail on the direction of the impact. The non-directional hypothesis cannot be used in the directional research process. It states that there would be some difference between the two conditions or groups,but it does not say that the difference would be greater or smaller. This means there is no direction of the effect specified. For instance, we could write like,”there is a difference between the amounts of cold symptoms faced right after the outbreak of a deadly virus in the participants who have been deprived for many hours compared to those who have slept well. In a correlated study, we can simply say that the research variables are correlated with each other. For instance, we can say that there would be a proper correlation between the variable A and B. In a directional research process, on the other hand, it does not have a kind of hypothesis which has no direction.
Anopen-ended non-directional hypothesis can help predict that the independent variables will impact the dependent variables. Nonetheless, in a non-directional hypothesis, the direction or nature of the relationship between the dependent and independent variables is unclear or defined. We suggest you to only make an alternative hypothesis non-directional when you are not confirmed about the direction of the relationship between the two variables. For instance, if you are studying the gender differences on several psychological tests, but you don’t know which will have a higher ratio for a particular test. In that case, you can use a non-directional hypothesis. For such tests, it is very common to use a non-directional hypothesis that only predicts the relationship between the dependent and independent variable but will not specify any direction. It is a simple statement that will show that there is a difference. You can further understand with the following examples:
- There would be a difference in the numbers recalled by adults and children correctly.
- There would be a difference in performance of the activities between boys and girls.
Conclusion:
Hypothesis testing is a useful tool for comparing the means of two populations. It can be a useful way to determine whether or not two populations have the same mean. But it’s important to distinguish between directional and non-directional hypothesis tests, as they both have their uses, and are used differently in specific circumstances. Hopefully this article provided you with additional information about directional and non-directional hypothesis tests, so you can make informed decisions on what type of test to conduct based on your research question.
