Educational Research and Student

Tips on Understanding and Remembering the Three Types of Hypotheses The three types of hypotheses can seem confusing at first, so it is helpful to devise tips for understanding and remembering their differences.

The three hypotheses -- null, nondirectional and directional -- can best be described in the following terse manner: null means no relationship between variables; nondirectional means that there is a relationship or difference between variables but the hypothesis is not concerned with the outcome of the relationship/difference -- only with the fact that the relationship/difference exists; and directions means that the outcome is important to the hypothesis.

To put it even more simply, null means no relationship/difference; nondirectional means relationship/difference; directional means outcome of relationship/difference (Elwell, 2013). The tips to remembering these three types of hypotheses can include spending time examining many different examples of hypotheses and identifying their type. For instance, the resource text provides examples of each and these can be used as a base for generating a solid idea of what hypotheses in each category look like, how they are formed, what their purpose is, etc.

As Mills and Gay (2016) point out, a hypothesis should be clearly defined, so it is helpful to identify the defined aspects of the hypothesis and see what it is driving at -- whether it is talking about no relationship (null), a relationship (nondirectional) or an outcome of the relationship (directional). This type of observation can help the student to become more familiar with the three different types and recognize them more easily.

Another tip for the student would be to read up on research studies that are written and that can be viewed using search engines like Google Scholar. These will expose the student to real life hypotheses. The student can look and decide what type of hypothesis is being used in the study. Students could even gather together and confer with one another about examples that they find to see if they are identifying them correctly.

Of course, the instructor's participation in this type of activity would be most helpful so as to provide guidance for the students -- but as the saying goes, practice makes perfect and practicing the identification of hypotheses in real-world studies can be a good way to cement the student's understanding of them. A tip for remembering these differences could be to develop mnemonic device -- such as using the letters in the terms to remind the student of their meaning.

For example, null starts with the letter "n" and the student can think that "n" means "no" -- as in "no relationship." The term "nondirectional" has the prefix "non" in it and the root word "directional" -- and the two go together, which can make the student think "relationship" and that this term signifies "relationship." "Directional" can be thought of as a sign -- a direction -- that points to a place, a destination, and can remind the student that this type of hypothesis stands for the "outcome" or the outcome of the relationship between variables.

Mnemonic devices are, over all, helpful ways of committing to memory ideas, concepts, definitions and characteristics that we might otherwise forget or confuse (Memory and Mnemoic.