Hi, I am a student doing research on the MBA level.
In my research, I have linear regressions, Chi-squares, and t-tests due different types of variables. I have around 8 variables that are tested against each other. I have two main hypotheses but have several sub-hypotheses that are tested in SPSS.
Due to my study having several analyses, are there any issues with having (too) many hypotheses? i.e 16 - 20? Are there any arbitrary limits or is "too many" something in research?
Thanks
Dear Dilpreet Singh
If you have too many research hypotheses, that are related to your topic, and you have elaborated them according to the requirements of the topic, then it should not be a problem.
It is also possible to introduce some control variables...
I suggest you read the relevant literature for more specifics.
- There are no imposed limits to the number of hypotheses but sometime the number of hypotheses may reflect the number of variables.
There is a cap on the types of tests we can run on each dataset. The more hypotheses we test against the data using the traditional scientific p-value based methodologies, the more likely it is that some of these tests may result in incorrect findings. And this creates a significant issue for the way science is conducted. So too many hypotheses arises problem in the study. If many hypotheses are there, some hypotheses gives the result in the favour of the study and some does not, it create the problem.
IMHO, too many hypotheses mean a fundamental lack of understanding of the system and 'fishing' for some correlation.
Before discussing your question I am going to write what is hypotheses. Hypotheses are nothing but just simple statements. Hypotheses can be formulated to establish a relation between theory and your research questions. Research questions are related to your research problem. The research problem is related to your research topic. Therefore we can say that based on the research topic we identify the research objectives, and to achieve the research objectives we raise different research questions. Based on research questions, we formulate a research hypothesis. Why do we formulate a hypothesis? This question is very important. To find out the path of investigation hypotheses are very important. Hypotheses provide guidelines to the researcher on which one is the best way to achieve the research objective. The hypothesis is also used to test whether there are significant relationships between dependent and independent variables. Sometimes hypotheses are also used to test the reliability and validity of data.
Now I am concentrating on your question. Too many hypotheses are not required to formulate. Where you need you can formulate a hypothesis for the confirmation of that statement. You try to concern different related literature and Conforme whether the hypothesis is necessary to consider or not.If you have many variables in your problem, it is not necessary to test their significance. You conform about particular variables based on the empirical literature, not necessary to formulate a hypothesis for their significance. Which reduce your number of hypothesis. Your other question is if some hypotheses support the result of your research and some do not, in that case, leave the variables which do not support the result, only supporting the hypothesis you considered in your research. The last question is based on the p-value why do we accept or reject the hypothesis because it is universal practice to accept and reject the hypothesis? It is not a traditional method but a universal method. Don't worry about its reliability. So at last I suggest you don't think about how many hypotheses I have in my research. But thinks about how I get answers to my research questions.
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