Developing rigorous hypotheses - Essay Example

By implication, even though there was a hypothesis from the first chapter of the study, the experimental framework provided that the study was conducted with much focus on an inductive research approach than deductive research approach. As explained by O’Leary (2006), a deductive approach is generally suitable for scientific research of this nature. This is because in these scientific researches, deductive approach is used by developing a hypothesis which is tentatively tested and examined to establish a theory (Ridley, 2012; Saunders, Lewis & Thornhill, 2003).

In effect, should deductive approach have been used exclusively in this study, the researcher would have had to focus the experiment on testing and examining the theory so that a firm theory or conclusion would be derived from the effect of the proposed scheme as a labelling scheme (Hardy & Bryman, 2004; Creswell, 2007). Meanwhile, it was not possible to use deductive approach alone, a reason for which no rigorous hypothesis was developed based on the experiment. As it has been explained earlier, the reason for refusing to use deductive approach alone, which would have called for the need to have a rigorous hypothesis was that there is no common test-bed based on which the performance, scalability and efficiency of labelling schemes can be assessed.

Meanwhile, Sapsford & Jupp (2006) indicated that for a rigorous hypothesis to be set, based on which a deductive research will be carried out, it is important that there will be an easily substantiated framework or platform based on which the hypothesis can be tested. In the absence of such a framework or platform, the hypothesis set fails to be considered a rigorous hypothesis but only a guiding hypothesis that specifies to the researcher what needs to be achieved with the study.Also writing on research approaches, Riley et al. (2000) suggested that in such a scientific research as this where cannot be a rigorous hypothesis due to lack of a test-bed based on which the hypothesis will be justified, it is important that a combined approach that involves an inductive approach is used.

It was based on this that the experimental framework used a combined approach comprising deductive approach and inductive approach. Yin (2009) explained an inductive research approach to be one which provides the researcher with greater flexibility and opportunity to modify the research emphasis depending on the accumulated findings throughout the research process. As a result of this, instead of exclusively basing on the hypothesis set in the first chapter, greater part of the research approach was inductive, where the researcher’s main basis for drawing conclusions on the performance, scalability and efficiency of the proposed labelling scheme was taken from the accumulated findings throughout the research process.

It is important to emphasise here that the research process as used in this case was experiment. As a result of the inductive approach, the researcher was afforded the opportunity of using transitivity logic which a qualitative approach to analysis, together with quantitative analysis, where the differences in readings between the DDE and GroupBased experiments were interpreted to draw conclusion on the performance, scalability and efficiency of the proposed scheme. Having said these, it would be acknowledged that such software engineering testing strategies as unit testing, integration testing and system testing could all be used in developing a rigorous hypothesis from experiments.