Question

Give an example of a research hypothesis that you could test. Then, describe how you could test this hypothesis using a correlation study. Last, turn your correlation study into an experimental design. Be clear about how the correlation study is different from the experimental design.

Answer 1

A research hypothesis that can be tested is whether there exists a relationship between infants’ weight and their milk intake.

We can test this hypothesis by collecting the weights and the amount of milk infant's take for a month and then run a Pearson correlation test to check whether there is a linear relationship between infant’s weight and the amount of milk intake.

This study can be converted into an experiment by giving a fixed amount of milk to infant’s then checking the impact of this intake on the weights. Here, we are fixing the amount of milk hence it is not a correlational study.