PROCESS OF SCIENCE Explain why researchers formulate a null hypot...

Question

PROCESS OF SCIENCE Explain why researchers formulate a null hypothesis in addition to a hypothesis when designing an experimental study.

Accepted Answer

Welcome back. Let's look at our next question. It says which of the following states the importance of the null hypothesis? Let's recall from our content video what that null hypothesis is and that is the hypothesis that there is no significant difference between groups, whether it's groups of data population and there's no significant difference beyond that due to random chance or experimental error. So I'm studying two populations of lions and one on the average is larger than the other. And I want to study what factors might have led group A to be larger but perhaps just by random chance, group A. Had more large lions than group B. Not due to any um effect, but just just by random chance in my samples. Or perhaps I thought I had assigned patients randomly to two different groups, my control group and my group getting a drug, but I somehow was influenced in the way that I assigned people to those groups and it wasn't truly random. I made an error in my sampling and this is important because if there's no significant difference, I have to rule that out before I try to make any statements or hypotheses about the reasoning behind differences between groups. So let's look at our answer choices to see what best describes this. So Choice A says to disprove the main hypothesis. Well that would not be our correct answer. Um because the null hypothesis starts from idea that there is no difference. Um so it kind of rules things out from the beginning. So it doesn't say that our hypothesis was wrong. Just says there's nothing to hypothesize on because there isn't any significant difference, Choice B says to provide an alternative hypothesis. This is also incorrect because again it's not looking for a different explanation of a change, It's saying again, no significant difference exists. Then Choice C. Says to identify if observed differences are caused by chance alone. And yes, this is the importance of the null hypothesis. You need to identify if the observed differences are a result of random chance, and Choice D. Says to give a more relevant assumption. So that is also not correct because again there's nothing to assume about if there's no difference between the groups. So again, which of the following states the importance of the null hypothesis choice C to identify if the observed differences are caused by chance alone. Thanks for watching See you in the next video.

PROCESS OF SCIENCE Explain why researchers formulate a null hypothesis in addition to a hypothesis when designing an experimental study.

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