Can you share a little more information regarding the nature of your research question? For example, if you are undertaking primarily a quantitative study with qualitative elements embedded, it may be appropriate to have hypotheses however this is driven by the nature of the research question. Are your research questions deductive or inductive? If deductive then again hypotheses may be an appropriate choice. I hope this helps.
Corina is correct if we talking about 'classic' mixed methods i.e. quant/qual. Mixed methods can be qual-qual or quant-quant as well. Any quantitative component has the potential to state hypotheses - but not always. It can also be questions/statement - especially depending on how descriptive the quantitative data is.
If you don't have any hypotheses, then both components of your study need to be exploratory. It is certainly possible to have an exploratory quantitative study, but that is not the traditional approach.
I think of mixed methods research as integrating the results from qualitative and quantitative studies, so I personally would not consider descriptive quantitative data enough to make something mixed methods, unless a topic was so new that having descriptive data alone would be considered a substantial addition to knowledge.
Need of hypothesis is determined by objective and nature of data. So it can't be said as others share some more information
Need of hypothesis is determined by objective and nature of data. So it can't be said as others share some more information
Hello.
There are many different research designs in mixed methods. In the designs of sequential type: QUAL followed by QUAN or QUAN followed by QUAL is very frequent the formulation of hypotheses, however the state of the study in which these hypotheses are posed changes. In the first case, it is posed after the analysis of the qualitative component, in the second case it is posed at the beginning, after reviewing the literature.
Thank you Corina Sheerin ! But I am confused because I've been told that if hypotheses are used in a social science research, then I don't have to create any research question. Is that true?
Research questions can be broader than specific hypotheses, but when your research question is explicitly stated a testable hypothesis, that is enough.
This is an interesting question i have gained more information. I however would also i want to ask i have seen some hypotheses in qualitative studies is this appropriate? When i inquired more on the subject during a research training that i attended the consensus was that it is appropriate. what is your take on this issue?
Yes, a hypothesis "can" be appropriate in a qualitative study, but you need some mechanism address your prediction -- given that it will almost never be possible to use statistical tests. For example, in a comparative case study you could make predictions about the cases will differ.
However, many qualitative studies are largely exploratory, and hypotheses would not be appropriate then.
I do not understand and I am totally lost now. I am doing my 1 year master and no one in the previous years did hypothesis testing according to this picture. It is all about mathematical calculations, z value and + - what the students must do if they are not familiar at all about mathematical calculations? In Master's thesis no one has done it this way but they used operationalisation. And still, why there is only way to test the hypothesis as shown in picture?
You can find many presentations about this topic on YouTube. Here is a relatively basic one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FmxvmlOmfA
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