Research Question, Thesis & Hypothesis: The Differences

In this chapter, we explain the relationships between different key terms used in academic writing. When you write a scientific paper, you will encounter terms like "research question", "thesis", "hypothesis", or "assumption". These are often used as synonyms or even confused with one another. To prevent this from happening to you, we now want to briefly highlight the differences and explain the key features - because they are crucial to your paper's later success.

Note: Are you writing your thesis? With our service GoThesis, you can quickly write a successful scientific paper. Here you'll find just about everything you need for writing a paper. With AI tools, topic suggestions, and affordable plagiarism checking, your paper is guaranteed to be a success!

The Topic of Your Paper

The foundation of your scientific paper is - unsurprisingly - the topic, which you have defined together with your supervisor based on a problem statement. Here you move step by step from the general topic to the perfect title of your scientific paper. You will find how you can find the right topic (Step 1) or formulate the perfect title of your paper (Step 2) in further chapters of empirioWissen.

 

 

The Research Question

The topic of your paper is usually formulated quite broadly. Therefore, another component comes into play in all scientific papers - the so-called research question. Here you, as the author, clarify the topic of your paper and set the direction of your investigation. In a sense, it is the answer to the question "What do you want to research in the scientific paper?".

It must be clearly formulated and provide a precise objective. Since the research question is crucial for how you proceed in your paper, it is presented directly in the introduction. You can then use it as a red thread throughout your entire work and answer it at the end in your conclusion. Whether it's a homework assignment, bachelor's, or master's thesis, every scientific paper requires this research question.

Although it may seem that the research question must be formulated as a question: This is not necessarily the case. You can just as well start with formulations like "The purpose of this paper is..." or "This paper explains...".

 

 

 

Theses and Hypotheses

In contrast, there are theses and hypotheses. They are often viewed as synonyms for the research question, but they are actually something completely different. They are claims or assumptions made by an author that must then be proven or disproven scientifically. Therefore, use the terms "thesis" and "hypothesis" only when you can test them with the help of empirical research. In most homework assignments, you should therefore speak of a research question in your texts and then answer it at the end of the paper - as already mentioned. However, if you conduct empirical research, it is essential in the practical section to formulate the thesis and the hypotheses to be tested.

Theses are (potentially controversial) claims derived from the topic of your paper. While they may be based on facts, they ultimately represent your evaluation as an author. It is important that the thesis can be tested on the one hand and that argumentative discussion is possible on the other. Therefore, a purely fact-based statement cannot be used as a thesis, such as: "29% of students are registered with sports clubs". Although you could certainly investigate this and confirm or refute it accordingly, it is difficult to argue about it.

 

A hypothesis is a more specific form of a thesis. In contrast to a thesis, it directly establishes a relationship between at least two variables. It is therefore a preliminary statement by you that will be tested later and either confirmed or refuted as a result. A hypothesis - unlike a research question - is only needed for empirical research. Hypotheses can be formulated with certain sentence patterns:

• If..., then...
• The more..., the more...

For a hypothesis to have a scientific character, it must meet certain criteria. These include:

• Universal applicability
• Falsifiable (it can be confirmed or refuted)
• Consistent
• Understandable (justified)
• Operationalizable (translatable into variables)

 

From the hypotheses you then create so-called "statistical hypotheses" for empirical testing. With these, you can determine the truth value of the hypotheses you have formulated and test them from a statistical perspective. In statistical tests there are two possible outcomes:

1. The hypothesis can be confirmed (verified)
2. The hypothesis cannot be confirmed / can be refuted (falsified)

To be able to perform these tests, you establish a null hypothesis (h0) and an alternative hypothesis (h1) based on your own hypothesis. The null hypothesis states that there is no relationship between the variables; the alternative hypothesis is what you want to test. If this can be rejected from a statistical perspective, your original hypothesis is confirmed. Statistically speaking, you actually proceed in exactly the opposite direction.

 

Assumptions

Another important term in scientific papers is "assumption". This can be translated as "facts that you presuppose without proof in your paper". They set the framework of your investigation in a certain way. Unlike theses and hypotheses, these do not need to be tested, but they definitely must be mentioned in the course of your own statements.

 

 

Summary and Overview of the Individual Terms

Finally, we want to summarize all the terms from this chapter with the examples:

• Topic: The relationship between sports and successful university studies
• Research Question: The purpose of this paper is to determine the relationship between student physical activity and their later success in university studies
• Thesis: Physical activity plays a role in academic success
• Hypothesis: The more students engage in sports, the better their grades are in university
• Statistical Hypothesis:
  • Null hypothesis for statistical testing: There is no relationship between physical activity and grades in university
  • Alternative hypothesis: There is a relationship between physical activity and grades in university
• Assumption: Students were defined as young people between 18 and 29 years old who were enrolled in universities