Assignment 1: Research Questions& Hypotheses At this point in the semester you may not have settled on one specific researclh question, but you should have been thinking through a topic area and some potential questions. For this assignment, please generate at least 2 but potentially 4 questions you are interested in answering for the final project. For each question list your hypothesis (Ha, or the alternative hypothesis) and the null hypothesis (Ho) that you’re trving to reject. You might have four potential questions if two are about describing I pattern (is pattern of x random spatially?) and two are about the process of that pattern (if x isn’t random spatially, why? Or how? Or so what?). Note that I say reject and not disprove. If a null hypothesis could truly be proven to be wrong then there would be no point of replication in science. Sampling errors or other errors can lead one to falsely reject a null hypothesis. This is why a concern for replication does not vanish simply because a researcher’s initial study leads to a rejection of the null hypothesis. The objective of replication is to see if the conclusions reached in the first investigation show up again in the second, replicated study. Clearly, the call for replication is based on the awareness that conclusions drawn from the first study might be erroneous. If the initial study had the ability to prove things, no replication would be needed. Anyhow, here is what the question and Ha and Ho would be for the swan example: What color are swans? Ha Swans can be many colors. Ho All swans are white. Finding a single non-white swan would lead you to reject the null hypothesis (HO) that all swans are white and confirm your altemative hypothesis that swans can be many colors. If the hypotheses were switched, and you were trying to prove that all swans are white, no matter how many swans you found that were white you would still not be able to confirm your hypothesis. It is easier to reject than to confirm. That’s why all science so far is hypotheses that just have not yet been rejected. Example Questions & Hypotheses 1a. What is the distribution of swine farms in lowa? Ha Swine farms are clustered in certain parts of the state Ho Swine farms are evenly distributed across lowa. 1b. Are traditional environmental justice variables (minority populations, poor populations, low-education populations) associated with swine farm patterns in lowa? Ha Swine farms will be found in areas with higher proportions of EJ populations. Ho There is no relationship between EJ population variables and swine farm density