What Is A Dissertation Hypothesis And How To Write It Without Effort?

The best way to write something with virtually no effort is to educate yourself on what it’s all about and then follow a pattern and just get it done. This short guide will do just that.

What is a dissertation hypothesis?

This is a statement of what you predict based on whatever theory you’re researching as part of your study. For example, if you are a doctoral candidate, you test your hypothesis in your dissertation, which is your original research project. You must write and defend it in order to graduate.

The research hypothesis must be testable, or there would be no project and therefore no paper to write. There may be several types of hypotheses, including a one-tailed which means you specify a direction, and an increase or decrease. The other kind is a two-tailed, which cannot specify direction but does specify a change.

Guidelines to writing your research hypothesis

The hypothesis must be written before you start to collect or analyze any data. This may seem obvious but it’s a point worth noting. Your hypothesis should contain an independent variable; it’s what you control, and a dependent variable which is what you will observe or measure. It changes as a result of the independent variable.

The null hypothesis is tested directly and does not predict an effect. The alternative is in contradiction to the null and does predict an effect.

If you need to see a long list of examples of hypotheses a good resource is your college or university. You can see a wide variety of them and how they are presented.

Examples of different hypotheses

If you take the general topic of violent video games and their effect on teen aggression, you could state the different types of hypotheses as such:

  • Null hypothesis: Violent video game playing has no effect on teen aggression
  • Alternate: Violent video game playing has an effect on teen aggression
  • One-Tailed: Violent video game playing increases teen aggression

Take your research question and experiment with different ways of writing it in the different forms. This will help you to make a decision as to whether or not you want one-tailed or two-tailed. Either way, you still need both a null hypothesis and an alternate. If your research fails to support your alternate then the null still stands. If your results support the alternate, then you reject the null.