TESTING OF HYPOTHESIS

Meaning of hypothesis
Ordinarily, when one talks about hypothesis, one simply means a mere
assumption or some supposition to be proved or disproved. But for a
researcher hypothesis is a formal question that he intends to resolve.
Thus a hypothesis may be defined as a proposition or a set of
proposition set forth as an explanation for the occurrence of
some specified group of phenomena either asserted merely as a
provisional conjecture to guide some investigation or accepted
as highly probable in the light of established facts.

Quite often a research hypothesis is a predictive statement, capable of

being tested by scientific methods, that relates an independent variable
to some dependent variable.

For example, consider statements like the following ones: “Students

who receive counselling will show a greater increase in creativity than
students not receiving counselling” Or “the automobile A is performing
as well as automobile B.” These are hypotheses capable of being
objectively verified and tested.

Thus, we may conclude that a hypothesis states what we are looking for
and it is a proposition which can be put to a test to determine its
validity.

Characteristics of hypothesis: Hypothesis must possess the following

characteristics:

(i) Hypothesis should be clear and precise. If the hypothesis is not clear
and precise, the inferences drawn on its basis cannot be taken as
reliable.

(ii) Hypothesis should be capable of being tested. In a swamp of

untestable hypotheses, many a time the research programmes have
bogged down. Some prior study may be done by researcher in order to
make hypothesis a testable one. A hypothesis “is testable if other
deductions can be made from it which, in turn, can be confirmed or
disproved by observation.”

(iii) Hypothesis should state relationship between variables, if it happens

to be a relational hypothesis.

(iv) Hypothesis should be limited in scope and must be specific. A

researcher must remember that narrower hypotheses are generally
more testable and he should develop such hypotheses.

(v) Hypothesis should be stated as far as possible in most simple terms

so that the same is easily understandable by all concerned. But one
must remember that simplicity of hypothesis has nothing to do with its
significance.

(vi) Hypothesis should be consistent with most known facts i.e., it must
be consistent with a substantial body of established facts. In other
words, it should be one which judges accept as being the most likely.

(vii) Hypothesis should be amenable to testing within a reasonable time.

One should not use even an excellent hypothesis, if the same cannot be
tested in reasonable time for one cannot spend a life-time collecting
data to test it.

(viii) Hypothesis must explain the facts that gave rise to the need for
explanation. This means that by using the hypothesis plus other known
and accepted generalizations, one should be able to deduce the original
problem condition. Thus hypothesis must actually explain what it claims
to explain; it should have empirical reference.

Basic concepts of testing

hypothesis
(a) Null hypothesis and alternative hypothesis: In the context of
statistical analysis, we often talk about null hypothesis and alternative
hypothesis. If we are to compare method A with method B about its
superiority and if we proceed on the assumption that both methods are
equally good, then this assumption is termed as the null hypothesis. As
against this, we may think that the method A is superior or the method
B is inferior, we are then stating what is termed as alternative
hypothesis. The null hypothesis is generally symbolized as H0 and the
alternative hypothesis as Ha .

The null hypothesis and the alternative hypothesis are chosen before
the sample is drawn (the researcher must avoid the error of deriving
hypotheses from the data that he collects and then testing the
hypotheses from the same data). In the choice of null hypothesis, the
following considerations are usually kept in view:

(i) Alternative hypothesis is usually the one which one wishes to prove
and the null hypothesis is the one which one wishes to disprove. Thus, a
null hypothesis represents the hypothesis we are trying to reject, and
alternative hypothesis represents all other possibilities.

(ii) If the rejection of a certain hypothesis when it is actually true

involves great risk, it is taken as null hypothesis because then the
probability of rejecting it when it is true is α (the level of significance)
which is chosen very small.

(iii) Null hypothesis should always be specific hypothesis i.e., it should

not state about or approximately a certain value.

Generally, in hypothesis testing we proceed on the basis of null

hypothesis, keeping the alternative hypothesis in view. Why so? The
answer is that on the assumption that null hypothesis is true, one can
assign the probabilities to different possible sample results, but this
cannot be done if we proceed with the alternative hypothesis. Hence the
use of null hypothesis (at times also known as statistical hypothesis) is
quite frequent.

(b) The level of significance: This is a very important concept in the

context of hypothesis testing. It is always some percentage (usually 5%)
which should be chosen with great care, thought and reason. In case we
take the significance level at 5 per cent, then this implies that H0 will be
rejected when the sampling result (i.e., observed evidence) has a less
than 0.05 probability of occurring if H0 is true. In other words, the 5 per
cent level of significance means that researcher is willing to take as
much as a 5 per cent risk of rejecting the null hypothesis when it (H0 )
happens to be true. Thus the significance level is the maximum value of
the probability of rejecting H0 when it is true and is usually determined
in advance before testing the hypothesis.

(c) Decision rule or test of hypothesis: Given a hypothesis H0 and

an alternative hypothesis Ha , we make a rule which is known as
decision rule according to which we accept H0 (i.e., reject Ha ) or reject
H0 (i.e., accept Ha ). For instance, if (H0 is that a certain lot is good
(there are very few defective items in it) against Ha ) that the lot is not
good (there are too many defective items in it), then we must decide the
number of items to be tested and the criterion for accepting or rejecting
the hypothesis. We might test 10 items in the lot and plan our decision
saying that if there are none or only 1 defective item among the 10, we
will accept H0 otherwise we will reject H0 (or accept Ha ). This sort of
basis is known as decision rule.

(d) Type I and Type II errors: In the context of testing of hypotheses,

there are basically two types of errors we can make. We may reject H0
when H0 is true and we may accept H0 when in fact H0 is not true. The
former is known as Type I error and the latter as Type II error. In other
words, Type I error means rejection of hypothesis which should have
been accepted and Type II error means accepting the hypothesis which
should have been rejected. Type I error is denoted by α (alpha) known
as α error, also called the level of significance of test; and Type II error is
denoted by β (beta) known as β error. In a tabular form the said two
errors can be presented as follows:

The probability of Type I error is usually determined in advance and is

understood as the level of significance of testing the hypothesis. If type I
error is fixed at 5 per cent, it means that there are about 5 chances in
100 that we will reject H0 when H0 is true. We can control Type I error
just by fixing it at a lower level. For instance, if we fix it at 1 per cent, we
will say that the maximum probability of committing Type I error would
only be 0.01. But with a fixed sample size, n, when we try to reduce
Type I error, the probability of committing Type II error increases. Both
types of errors cannot be reduced simultaneously. There is a trade-off
between two types of errors which means that the probability of making
one type of error can only be reduced if we are willing to increase the
probability of making the other type of error.

one should prefer a Type I error to a Type II error. As a result one must
set very high level for Type I error in one’s testing technique of a given
hypothesis. Hence, in the testing of hypothesis, one must make all
possible effort to strike an adequate balance between Type I and Type II
errors

(e) Two-tailed and One-tailed tests: In the context of hypothesis

testing, these two terms are quite important and must be clearly
understood. A two-tailed test rejects the null hypothesis if, say, the
sample mean is significantly higher or lower than the hypothesised
value of the mean of the population. Such a test is appropriate when the
null hypothesis is some specified value and the alternative hypothesis is
a value not equal to the specified value of the null hypothesis.
Symbolically, the twotailed test is appropriate when we have H0 H0 : µ µ
= and Ha H : µ µ ≠ 0 which may mean µ µ > H0 or µ µ< H0 . Thus, in a
two-tailed test, there are two rejection regions* , one on each tail of the
curve which can be illustrated as under:

Mathematically we can state: Acceptance Region A Z : < 196 . Rejection

Region R Z : > 196 . If the significance level is 5 per cent and the two-
tailed test is to be applied, the probability of the rejection area will be
0.05 (equally splitted on both tails of the curve as 0.025) and that of the
acceptance region will be 0.95 as shown in the above curve. If we take µ
= 100 and if our sample mean deviates significantly from 100 in either
direction, then we shall reject the null hypothesis; but if the sample
mean does not deviate significantly from µ , in that case we shall accept
the null hypothesis.

But there are situations when only one-tailed test is considered

appropriate. A one-tailed test would be used when we are to test, say,
whether the population mean is either lower than or higher than some
hypothesised value. For instance, if our H0 H0 : µ µ = and Ha H : µ µ < 0
, then we are interested in what is known as left-tailed test (wherein
there is one rejection region only on the left tail) which can be illustrated
as below:

Testing of means
In psychology sometimes we are interested in knowing about the significance of the
differences between populations. For example we are interested to discover whether ten
year old boys and girls differ in their linguistic ability. Or we want to find out if children
from high SES (Socio Economic Status) perform and score better academically than
children from low SES. We may also try to find out at times, if two groups of persons
coming from different background differ in their agility factor. Thus, many questions are
asked and to be answered in psychology for which one of the measures we use is the
Mean.

Let us take the first question on linguistic ability of boys and girls. First we randomly select
a large sample of boys and girls (large sample means the group comprises of 30 or more
than 30 persons.). Then we administer a battery of verbal test to measure the linguistic
ability of the two groups and compute the mean scores on linguistic ability test of the two
groups. Let us say the obtained mean scores for boys and girls are M1and M2
respectively. Now we try to find the difference between the two means. If we get a large
difference (M1 – M2) in favour of the girls then we can confidently say that girls of 10
years of age are significantly more able linguistically than 10 years old boys. On the
contrary if we find small difference between two means then we would conclude that ten
years old girls and boys do not differ in linguistic ability.

An obtained mean is influenced by sampling fluctuation or error of sampling and

whatever differences are obtained in the means, it may be due to this sampling error.
Even mean of population 1 and mean of the population 2 may be the same but because of
sampling error we may find the difference in the range of the two samples drawn from
the two populations. In order to test the significance of an obtained difference we must
first have a standard error (SE) of the difference. Then from the difference between the
sample mean and standard error of difference we can say whether the difference is
significant or not. Now the question arises what do we mean by significant difference?
According to Garrett (1981) a difference is called significant when the probability is high
and that it cannot be attributed to chance that is (temporary and accidental factors) and
hence represent a true difference between population mean. A difference is non
significant when it appears reasonably certain that it could easily have arisen from
sampling fluctuation and hence imply no real or true differences between the population
means.

Chi-square test as a test for

comparing variance.

A chi-square test ( Snedecor and Cochran, 1983) can be used to

test if the variance of a population is equal to a specified value.
This test can be either a two-sided test or a one-sided test. The
two-sided version tests against the alternative that the true
variance is either less than or greater than the specified value.
The one-sided version only tests in one direction. The choice of
a two-sided or one-sided test is determined by the problem. For
example, if we are testing a new process, we may only be
concerned if its variability is greater than the variability of the
current process.