1 Create your hypothesis. Try phrasing the hypothesis as a question like "Does smoking cause lung cancer?"
2
Formulate the hypothesis by making it a conditional statement like "Smoking may cause lung cancer."
3
Write a formalized hypothesis like "If smoking causes lung cancer,
then individuals who smoke have a higher frequency of developing the
disease." This type of "if-then" hypothesis is considered the most
useful.
4
Double-check that your hypothesis contains variables. The researcher
is in control of the independent variable in the experiment. The
dependant variable, however, is merely observed in the context of the
experiment. For an experiment to be valid, it must contain at least two
variables.
5
Verify that your hypothesis includes a subject group. A subject group
defines who or what the researcher is studying. In the example above,
the subject group is the smokers.
6
Include a treatment or exposure in the experiment. A treatment is
literally what is being done to the subject group. In our example, the
exposure is smoke or smoking.
7
Prepare for an outcome measure, which is a measurement concerned with
how the treatment is going to be assessed. The outcome measure in our
smoking scenario is the frequency of smokers developing cancer in
subject population.
8
Understand your control group. The control group or placebo is a
group similar to the subject group, but this group does not receive the
treatment. It is a population that the subject group is compared to. In
the smoking example, the control group is non-smokers.
