Application: Hypothesis Testing

Application: Hypothesis Testing

A hypothesis is your prediction of what results will likely emerge from your study. Possessing various skills will determine your success as a researcher in Psychology; one of them is generating hypotheses based on logic, valid observations, and sound theoretical background, and the other is testing them effectively.

You may presume that the sun is not going to rise tomorrow, but that is not a hypothesis. Can you guess why? The answer is because there is no logic or theoretical support behind your presumption. On the other hand, you may hypothesize (based on what you read and observe) that anger affects the quality of people’s decisions. This may be a valid hypothesis, but what if your way of determining whether a decision is good or not is faulty? Your results will not be valid because your testing process was not effective.

You can attain the skills of generating plausible hypotheses and testing them with a little diligent practice. You also need sound knowledge about the theoretical concepts related to generating and testing hypotheses.

For this Assignment, you create a research hypothesis concerning a topic in psychology that interests you. Subsequently, you examine various concepts associated with developing and testing a hypothesis.

To prepare:

• Read the assigned pages from Chapter 6 of your course text.
• Read Chapter 8 of your course text.
• You may also review and research materials (hard copies or online) outside this week’s Learning Resources that are relevant to the Assignment, if you wish.
• Go to the Psychology Topics Web page on httpss://www.apa.org/topics/ the APA website. Choose one topic that interests you. Consider what you would do if you were trying to test a hypothesis, based on the topic that you researched for the Discussion this week. Review the concepts of Type I and II errors and effect sizes.

The Assignment (1–2 pages):

• Create a research hypothesis based on the topic you chose. Clearly state the hypothesis and identify the independent and dependent variables in your hypothesis.
• Assume that you conducted your study and did a statistical analysis of your results. If you made a Type I error, what specifically would that mean in your study?
• If you made a Type II error, what specifically would that mean in your study?
• Assume that your results were statistically significant, but your effect size was small. What would that mean specifically applied to your study?