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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, although their use in quantitative inquiry is becoming more prominent. Hypotheses are relevant to theoretical research and are typically used only in quantitative inquiry. When a writer states hypotheses, the reader is entitled to have an exposition of the theory that lead 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.   A research question poses a relationship between two or more variables but phrases the relationship as a question; a hypothesis represents a declarative statement of the relations between two or more variables 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   Hypotheses can be couched in four kinds of statements.   Literary null—a "no difference" forms 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."   Operational null—a "no difference" forms 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.   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."   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.