Research Design - Lecture

Finding a question is often the hardest thing to do.

To do science, you must contribute to the body of knowledge regarding the universe. You must report the results.

Two stages to asking a question about an ecological subject:

• Descriptive stage:

  • examination

  • observations lead to tentative explanation of observations

  • Form descriptive null hypothesis (either reject the null, or fail to reject the null)

    • Failing to reject the null can lead you to look back at the observations and redo the hypothesis until you can reject a null hypothesis.

• Functional Stage - now postulate a cause, finding out why there is a pattern

  • Design experiment - control or natural experiment

  • Formulate functional null hypothesis as well as the alternative hypothesis

  • Conduct experiment collect data

  • Carry out statistical test

  • Fail to reject null (go back) or reject null

  • Report results and interpret results

  • Postulate another question or hypothesis.

Being observant, a question will form based upon noticing a nonrandom pattern. Next step is to formalize the question and turn it into a null and alternative hypothesis.

Some researchers will not present a null and alternative hypothesis. They will collect and present the data for others to make their own conclusions.

The Descriptive Hypothesis

A statistical hypothesis requires finding out what can be measured.

Think about the process all the way to end before collecting data.

Two-table hypothesis: whether the difference is greater or less than whatever indicates that there IS a significance

“WHY” is the more difficult, expensive, and complicated question to answer.

More research/observation is needed to find out why.