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Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.zain Reiger Park (chapter 5). Joubert’s construction of a typology of valueorientations is also a good example of the manner in which a more theoreticalhypothesis or central thesis was developed directly from the model postulatedby Parsons (Appendix 2).On the other hand, it is possible to generate hypotheses inductively fromobservations and experience. In unstructured or semi-structured research, theresearcher is likely to perceive new relationships — relationships that can beformulated in the form of hypotheses. In reading a certain text or documents,the researcher frequently notices implicit themes or structures that are, in someway, related to the more obvious themes and, in this manner, is led to theformulation of a new hypothesis. In his investigation into the philosophy ofscience of Francis Bacon, Mouton (1987) noticed that Bacon wouldconsistently illustrate an idea relating to scientific progress with religiousanalogies. Further investigation led to the conjecture that Bacon’s notion ofscientific progress was, in an important sense, a secularization of themillenialistic notions of a future reign of peace. This supposition wassubsequently elaborated and various hypotheses concerning the origin ofBacon’s theories of scientific advancement, objectivity, and methodologyeventually became the central object of the investigation.Within the framework of quantitative research in which hypotheses are tested,it has become customary to refer quite specifically to the statistical hypothesisand the null hypothesis. A statistical hypothesis is a statement in statisticalterms in which the statistical relationship between phenomena is postulated.For example, that the means of A are larger than those of B ( µ A > µ B), or that thecorrelation coefficient is larger than 0,30 (r > + ,30). A statistical hypothesis isa prediction of the nature of the outcome of the statistical analysis of thequantitative data in an investigation.It is not possible, however, to test the statistical hypothesis in its original form.It has to be tested against something else. This something else is the nullhypothesis. The null hypothesis is a statistical statement in which it ispostulated that no relationship or no difference exists between the variablesthat are being studied. In terms of the examples in the previous paragraph, theassociated null hypotheses would postulate that the means of A and B do notdiffer, or that r = 0. Kerlinger describes the null hypothesis in the followingterms: The null hypothesis says, “you’re wrong, there is no relation; disproveme if you can” (1973: 202). Particularly in experimental investigations, it iscustomary to structure the research in such a manner that an attempt is made todisprove or falsify the null hypothesis. If the null hypothesis were then shownto be false, the researcher is able to accept that a significant relationship existsbetween the variables that are being studied.Assume that the aim of an investigation is to assess the relative merits of twomethods of instruction. Further assume that the researcher formulates astatistical hypothesis to the effect that the mean scores on method A will be135