¶ … person conducting the research wants to know. If the answers to the research question are not answers that are valuable to the audience, then the wrong question was asked. Thus, the research question needs to be relevant, and it needs to contribute to the existing body of knowledge so that the research itself is relevant in the broader scheme of the subject (Voss, 2003). The City University of New York (n.d.) also highlights two other keys to a good research question. A good research question should be specific. If the question is too broad, it will be difficult to research or it will fail to provide value to the field. The more narrow the question, the more focused will be the research. There is a process by which a focused research question can be formed. The broad subject matter will already be known. The next step is to define an area of interest within that field. If private research, this can be defined by the client. In academic research, this would be defined by the researcher perhaps in consultation with faculty if the researcher is a student. Then a more focused topic can be determined. Many researchers stop here, but they should not. The focused topic then can be distilled into a singular research question that covers one specific area. The final step is to ensure that the question is researchable. Whatever methodology is chosen, there should be some theoretical materials available as background. The concept of "researchable" also applies to practicalities -- can the question...

The hypothesis is developed in line with the research. Thus, at least some of the literature review should have been conducted by this point, so that the researcher has a sense of what the hypothesis might be. The first thing to remember is that the hypothesis is something that the research is going to test. Therefore -- and this particularly applies to quantitative research -- the hypothesis must consist of at least two variables, one dependent and the other independent. This is less important in other forms of research but the hypothesis should still be something that the researcher intends to test (eHow, 2011). The "if-then" form is one of the most common forms of hypothesis.
There are two main types of hypothesis, the null and the alternative. The null hypothesis directly relates to the question being tested -- it is the expected answer to the question. If the question is answered in the affirmative, then the null hypothesis is confirmed. Many times, the research will also contain an alternative hypothesis. This is what the research will show if the null hypothesis is not proved. In some cases, the only thing the research can show is that the null hypothesis is not proved. However, there are cases where the research can be designed to show a more specific alternative hypothesis. The role of the null and alternative hypotheses…