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Choosing a research question in psychological statistics

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I have been asked to come up with a research question in psychological statistics.

Can you help me get started by clarifying some of the expectations of the paper.
- What is a null or alternative hypothesis?
- Should I choose a qualitative or quantitive design? Why would I choose one of the other?
- What is the difference between descriptive, correlational or experimental designs? Why?
- What would be an example of a varible for this study that could be measured on a nominal scale, ordinal scale, or ratio scale?
- Once I've collected all the data would I use inferential or descriptive statistics and why? I need to create a sample frequency distribution for one the variables.

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Solution Summary

A research question in psychological statistics is discussed. The null and alternative hypothesis is examined.

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Hi,
I am going to help break this down for you in order to better understand the requirements of the paper.

The research assistant (2003) advises the researcher to ask specific questions before coming up with a hypothesis. Some examples are:
- How familiar am I with the subject to be researched?
- Is this an area that could lead to greater understanding?
- What areas of this subject need further exploring?

A research question can be asking about something that you have always been curious about; Do tomato plants grow better in cow manure than in regular dirt? Do victims of verbal abuse in early childhood become drug addicts later in life?

Hypothesis are not written in question form but rather in a statement: Tomato plants grow better in cow manure than in regular dirt or Victims of ...

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