Catherine is taking a research methods class in which the semester project involves conducting original research. Catherine is interested in finding out if viewing particular television programs has an impact on behavior. She wants to see if children are more likely to engage in aggressive behavior after they watch television shows that exhibit violent images. Catherine's tentative prediction is what scientists refer to as .

The correct answer is a hypothesis

In the scientific method, a hypothesis can be defined as the provisional or attempted solution to a given problem. The level of truth attributed to such a hypothesis will depend on how the empirical data collected support or not what is stated in the hypothesis. This process, known as empirical contrasting of the hypothesis, can be carried out through confirmation (in the case of universal hypotheses) or verification (in the case of existential hypotheses).