Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

I am doing research and testing for a project on whether or not housecats are neurotic like wild cats. I was looking for help on my hypothesis. I believe that if I were to examine both housecats and wild cats, they would act around the same level of neuroticness. How would I phrase this?

i think you could you cause and effect .maybe if you use that maybe you could phrase it.

Hello and thank you for your question,

In order to formulate a hypothesis for your research project, I'd first narrow down what it is you'd like to test. You say that you want to compare both wild cats and house cats, but what do you want to measure? Neuroticism is more of a human psychological trait, but you could study a variety of cat behaviors. Once you know this, you can phrase a hypothesis in the form of: Do housecats display trait X at the same frequency as wildcats in environment Y?

Let us know a few more details and we'll be happy to help.