How can you improve your behavioral hypotheses and questions?

1 Define your problem and goal

Before you formulate your hypotheses and questions, you need to have a clear idea of what problem you are trying to solve and what goal you are trying to achieve. What is the behavioral outcome you are interested in? What is the context and population you are studying? What is the gap or challenge you are addressing? Defining your problem and goal will help you narrow down your focus, identify your assumptions, and avoid irrelevant or vague hypotheses and questions.

2 Use the PICOT framework

A useful framework to guide your hypotheses and questions is the PICOT framework, which stands for Population, Intervention, Comparison, Outcome, and Time. The PICOT framework helps you specify the key elements of your research question and hypothesis, and ensures that they are relevant, specific, measurable, and testable. For example, a PICOT question could be: How does offering a financial incentive (intervention) affect the recycling behavior (outcome) of college students (population) compared to no incentive (comparison) over a semester (time)?

3 Incorporate behavioral insights

One of the advantages of behavioral hypotheses and questions is that they can incorporate insights from behavioral economics and psychology, such as cognitive biases, heuristics, social norms, emotions, and motivations. These insights can help you generate novel and plausible hypotheses and questions that explain or predict human behavior. For example, a behavioral hypothesis could be: People are more likely to recycle if they perceive that their peers are doing so (social norm) and if they receive positive feedback (emotion) for their actions.

4 Seek feedback and validation

Once you have generated your hypotheses and questions, you should seek feedback and validation from different sources, such as experts, peers, stakeholders, and potential participants. Feedback and validation can help you refine, revise, or reject your hypotheses and questions, based on the evidence, logic, and feasibility of your ideas. You can also use various methods, such as literature reviews, surveys, interviews, or pilot tests, to validate your hypotheses and questions and assess their reliability and validity.

5 Iterate and learn

Finally, you should be prepared to iterate and learn from your hypotheses and questions, as they are not static or final. As you conduct your research, you may encounter new data, information, or insights that challenge or support your hypotheses and questions. You may also discover new hypotheses and questions that emerge from your findings or observations. You should be open to updating, modifying, or discarding your hypotheses and questions, based on the evidence and feedback you receive, and use them as a basis for further learning and inquiry.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?