Differences among research purposes, questions, and hypotheses

¶ … motivating factors or factors that drive a particular research study. Several different factors direct research efforts. In either quantitative or qualitative research there is often a purpose (or several purposes), a particular question being asked (or several questions), and one or more hypotheses. These driving factors: a purpose(s), research question (s), and research hypothesis (hypotheses) in any type of research study can be quite similar or quite different depending on the particular goals of the researchers. In order to explain this it is first best to briefly define these three terms.

The purpose (objective) of any particular research relates to the reason why the research is being performed (Farrugia, Petrisor, Farrokhyar, & Bhandari, 2010). For example, some research studies attempt to find different or more effective treatment options, some research studies attempt to define specific medical conditions or illnesses in a more practical manner, some research studies attempt to determine more effective managerial issues regarding nurses and clinical work, etc. Research questions offer relate to the purpose of the research but may not be as general in nature (Farrugia et al., 2010). For example one research question might be: "Does providing empathy and support for patients add to standard treatments for hypertension?" Another might be: "Does a clinical interview or a particular brainwave pattern better identify a psychiatric issue?" And still another might be: "Does the nurse -- patient ratio affect patient outcomes on a rehabilitation unit?" These three research questions are related to the above stated purposes for different types of research and yet they are not quite the same. Often the purpose of the research is broad (e.g., improving relationships) and the research question more specific (e.g., do weekly meetings foster closer relationships between nurses and nurse managers).

A hypothesis is in effect a type of research question or assumption stated in either statistical or operationalized terms (the term operationalize is used in research methods to explain how the variables in any particular research study are defined; Creswell, 2013). In other words a hypothesis is a kind of research question specific to that study and describes the relationship or prediction among the variables in the study (Farrugia et al., 2010). Hypotheses can be related in statistical terms (e.g., null and alternative hypothesis) or in terms of the variables in the study. Often the research questions and research hypotheses will be very closely related as a hypothesis is simply a more formal research question stated in terms of the particular variables in the study; however, sometimes this relationship may not be as clear-cut as the above examples. This is especially true in studies that use animals as subjects as these studies often are more difficult to generalize to human participants. However, they hypothesis should somehow satisfy both the purpose of the research and answer the research question at some level (Cook, Bordage, & Schmidt, 2008).