HYPOTHESIS

It is a Testable statement of the relationship among

variables.
There are several ways of stating the hypotheses:
If then, statements:
Can be stated to test the difference between two
groups
H1: Employees who are more healthy will take sick
leave less frequently
Or
H1: If the employees are more healthy they will take
sick leave less frequently.

Directional Statements

These are stated in the form of positive,

negative, more than, less than

H2: The greater the stress experienced in the job
the lower the job satisfaction from employees.
Women are more entwisted than men.

Non Directional Statements

Those that do not postulate a relationship or

Difference:
H3: There is a relationship between age and job
satisfaction.

Null and Alternate Hypotheses

A Null hypothesis is a proposition that states a

definitive, exact relationship between variables.

The Null states that there is no difference
between the population statistics and the
sample studied.
Statistical expression of the Null:
H0: 1=2

The alternate is opposite of the null, and

expresses a relationship between two variables

or indicating differences between groups.
HA: 12

Steps to be followed in hypothesis testing

State the null and alternate hypotheses
Choose the appropriate statistical test depending

on whether the data collected is parametric or non

parametric.
Determine the level of significance
Consider the significance level of the output.
When the resultant value is larger than the initial
value, the null is rejected and the alternate is
accepted. If the alternate value is less than the
critical value, the null is accepted and the alternate
is rejected.

MEASUREMENT SCALES

Research is about experiments. Experiments are set up

to obtain measurements about a phenomenon for

analysis. Before we can conduct a statistical analysis,
we need to measure our
dependent variable. The
measurements are carried out depending on the type of
variable involved in the analysis. Different types of
variables are measured differently. There are four levels
of measurement:
Nominal
Ordinal
Interval
Ratio

Nominal Scale

The lowest measurement level you can use, from a statistical point of view
A nominal scale, is placing of data into categories, without any order or

structure.
When measuring using a nominal scale, one simply names or categorizes
responses. Gender, handedness, favorite color, and religion are examples
of variables measured on a nominal scale. The essential point about
nominal scales is that they do not imply any ordering among the
responses. For example, when classifying people according to their favorite
color, there is no sense in which green is placed "ahead of" blue.
Responses are merely categorized.
In research activities a YES/NO scale is nominal. It has no order and
there is no distance between YES and NO.
The statistics which can be used with nominal scales are in the nonparametric group. The most likely ones would be: mode, cross tabulation
- with chi-square

Ordinal Scale

An ordinal scale is next up the list in terms of power of measurement.

The simplest ordinal scale is a ranking. When a market researcher asks

you to rank 5 types of beverages from most flavourful to least flavourful,

he/she is asking you to create an ordinal scale of preference.
There is no objective distance between any two points on your subjective
scale. For you the top beverage may be far superior to the second
preferred beverage but, to another respondent with the same top and
second beverage, the distance may be subjectively small.
An ordinal scale only lets you interpret gross order and not the relative
positional distances.
Ordinal data would use non-parametric statistics. These would include:
Median
and
mode
rank
order
correlation
non-parametric analysis of variance

Interval Scale

Interval scales are numerical scales in which

intervals have the same interpretation

throughout. As an example, consider the
Fahrenheit scale of temperature. The
difference between 30 degrees and 40 degrees
represents the same temperature difference
as the difference between 80 degrees and 90
degrees. This is because each 10-degree
interval has the same physical meaning (in
terms of the kinetic energy of molecules).

The

standard survey rating scale is an interval scale.

When you are asked to rate your satisfaction with a piece of software on a 7
point scale, from Dissatisfied to Satisfied, you are using an interval scale.
It is an interval scale because it is assumed to have equidistant points
between each of the scale elements. This means that we can interpret
differences in the distance along the scale. We contrast this to an ordinal
scale where we can only talk about differences in order, not differences in the
degree of order.
Interval scale data would use parametric statistical techniques:
Mean and standard deviation
Correlation r
Regression
Analysis of variance

Factor analysis
Advanced multivariate and modeling techniques

Ratio Scale

A ratio scale is the top level of measurement and is not

often available in social research.

The factor which clearly defines a ratio scale is that it
has a true zero point.
The simplest example of a ratio scale is the
measurement of length (disregarding any philosophical
points about defining how we can identify zero length).
The best way to contrast interval and ratio scales is to
look at temperature. The Centigrade scale has a zero
point but it is an arbitrary one. The Farenheit scale
has its equivalent point at -32o.