This document discusses hypotheses in research methods. It defines a hypothesis as a prediction or idea about what may happen in an experiment based on prior knowledge. An example hypothesis is provided about students who eat chocolate before an exam scoring higher. Variables are identified as things that change in experiments, with the independent variable being what is manipulated, like chocolate intake, and the dependent variable being what results from this, like exam scores. Readers are asked to develop their own hypotheses and identify the independent and dependent variables.