Once you have analyzed your task, chosen your topic, and narrowed the topic to make it manageable (see 4c and 5a), formulate a research question that you can tentatively answer with a hypothesis. The hypothesis, a statement of what you anticipate your research will show, needs to be manageable, interesting, and specific (see 5b). In addition, it must be a debatable proposition that you can prove or disprove with a reasonable amount of research evidence.
David Craig, the student whose research paper appears in 49e, made the following move from general topic to a narrowed topic and then to a research question and hypothesis:
| topic | Electronic messaging |
| narrowed topic | The language of messaging |
| issue | The effect of messaging on youth literacy |
| research question | How has the popularity of messaging affected literacy among today’s youth? |
| hypothesis | Messaging seems to have a negative influence on the writing skills of young people. |