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Firstly, here are variables, which play a major factor in shaping the various hypotheses. There are 'independent variables' and there are 'dependent variables'

Independent variables are variables used to define treatment groups, while dependent variables are variables which values in different treatment conditions are compared.

And to simply put, an 'independent variable' is a condition that someone actively controls/changes, while the 'dependent variable' is the thing that changes as a result.

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Independent Variables

1. Allowance

2. Internet Access

3. Household Income

4. Age*

5. Whether they own a CD walkman/mp3 player

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Dependent Variables

1. Amount of music downloaded

2. Number of CDs bought

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Hypotheses

These hypotheses have been designed so as to help answer the research questions and also to match the variables.

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1. The lower a student's allowance, the more music he/she would download.
(Less allowance would mean that he/she has less money to buy CDs)

2. The faster the internet access (dial-up, cable, broadband, super high speed broadband), the more music a student would download.
(Faster internet access would enable songs to be downloaded in a matter of minutes or seconds, making it more convienient to download songs rather then go to a shop and buy the original CD; a person with a slow dial-up connection could take an hour just to download a song, thus he may prefer to buy the CDs instead)

3. The lower the household income, the more music a student would download.
(Less money equals less spare change for original CDs, which cost manufacturers 20-50 cents each, and sell them out for $20-30, thus leading a student to download more music)

4. Students in their mid-teens (age 14-16) tend to download the most music.
(Students of these ages tend to be most passionate about music, and have the most time to download music, whereas their younger counterparts have not developed a passion for music yet, and their seniors will not have much time to spare on downloading music)*

5. People who own CD Walkmans/mp3 players download more music.
(If they have the player, they tend to have the urge to fill the player to maximum capacity)

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*Hypothesis and variable 4, highlighted in italics, was found to be unrelated to the whole study during the pilot survey. There were comments that age was not a key factor in music downloading, and due to the 'overload' of hypotheses, age as a factor should be dropped.