In the history of our (Iranian) Higher Education, the decades of 1370’s/1990’s witnessed the development of scientific research in many areas including educational and behavioral sciences. In our educational and behavioral researches, which are usually conducted by using descriptive and semi-experimental approaches, hypothesis- testing, mainly carried out by recourse to statistical significance testing, has gained a privileged status. But there is no consensus among methodologists and epistemologists concerning the procedures of hypothesis testing on the one hand, and statistical siginficance testing on the other.
In this article educational and behavioral research is’ looked at against a broad methodological and epistemological perspective to see how it stands with respect to hypothesis testing in general and significance testing in particular. To attain this goal, first an analysis of ‘hypothesis’ is given. Then hypothesis testing is explored within the tenets of empiricism and rationalism, leading to a discussion of Reichenbach’s inductivism and Popper’s deductivism. Finally, some of the basic criticisms leveled against statistical significance testing are reviewed. The arguments offfered point to certain methodological drawbacks in the educational and behavioral research of our higher education. It is concluded that progress in basic research in our country depends very much on overcoming these drawbacks implying that certaAj aspects of our research approaches should be reviewed.