3. Questions and/or Hypotheses:

Questions are relevant to normative or census type research (How many of them are there? Is there a relationship between them?). They are most often used in qualitative inquiry. Hypotheses are relevant to theoretical research and are generally used in experimental inquiry. When a writer states hypotheses, the reader is entitled to have an exposition of the theory that leads to them (and of the assumptions underlying the theory). Just as conclusions must be grounded in the data, hypotheses must be grounded in the theoretical framework.
Research should not include both questions and hypothesis because they are the same just different structure of the sentences. Deciding whether to use questions or hypotheses depends on factors such as the purpose of the study, the nature of the design and methodology, and the audience of the research. The practice of using hypotheses was derived from using the scientific method in social science inquiry since they have
philosophical advantages in statistical testing, as researchers should be and tend to be conservative and cautious in their statements of conclusions.

Types of research questions:
A. Descriptive questions: they reflect a description of a phenomenon or a variable: How much ….?, How many…..?, What are……?
B. Relationship questions: they reflect correlations between variables or causal relations between two variables or more.
C. Comparison questions: they reflect differences between two variables or groups or phenomenon or more.

Types of research hypothesis:
A. Literary null: a "no difference" form in terms of theoretical constructs. For example, "There is no relationship between support services and academic persistence of nontraditional-aged college women." Or "There is no difference in school achievement for high and low self-regulated students."

B. Operational null: A "no difference" form in terms of the operation required to test the hypothesis. For example, "There is no relationship between the number of hours nontraditional-aged college women use the student union and their persistence at the college after their freshman year." Or "There is no difference
between the mean grade point averages achieved by students in the upper and
lower quartiles of the distribution of the Self-regulated Inventory." The operational null is generally the preferred form of hypothesis-writing.

C. Literary alternative: A form that states the hypothesis you will accept if the null hypothesis is rejected, stated in terms of theoretical constructs. In other words, this is usually what you hope the results will show. For example, "The more that nontraditional-aged women use support services, the more they will persist
academically." Or, "High self-regulated students will achieve more in their classes than low self-regulated students."
D. Operational alternative: Similar to the literary alternative except that the operations are specified. For example, "The more that nontraditional-aged college women use the student union, the more they will persist at the college after their freshman year." Or, "Students in the upper quartile of the Self-regulated Inventory distribution achieve significantly higher grade point averages than do students in the lower quartile."
In general, the null hypothesis is used if theory/literature does not suggest a hypothesized relationship between the variables under investigation; the alternative is generally reserved for situations in which theory/research suggests a relationship or directional interplay. Be prepared to interpret any possible outcomes with respect to the questions or hypotheses. It will be helpful if you visualize in your mind's eye the tables (or other summary devices) that you expect to result from your research. Questions and hypotheses are testable propositions deduced and directly derived from theory (except in grounded theory studies
and similar types of qualitative inquiry).