A research question with subquestions, and all with hypotheses: Numbering schemes? I am editing a dissertation that has a single research question with multiple subquestions, and where every question has a null and alternative hypotheses. The current numbering and lettering scheme looks like this:

RQ  SQ1  SQ2  SQ3
Ho  H1o  H2o  H3o
Ha  H1a  H2a  H3a


An anonymous reviewer (name and role unknown) insists that the RQ must be numbered, even though there is only one RQ. 

The reviewer offered no suggestions, and I was unable to find guidance in the APA manual, in the university's style guide, or by searching online such as at Purdue OWL on how to number for this specific situation.


Is it feasible to use RQ0, as in:



RQ0  SQ1  SQ2  SQ3
H0o  H1o  H2o  H3o
H0a  H1a  H2a  H3a



If it's not feasible, then we could abandon the subquestions, and bump all questions "up" to RQ, which (to me) seems an unnecessary and misleading contrivance.   



     RQ1  RQ2  RQ3  RQ4
     H1o  H2o  H3o  H4o
     H1a  H2a  H3a  H4a


So what would be another feasible solution?
I can't tell whether this would work, but here's a possible way out:

Number all your research questions, as follows:

Question 1.1 (~RQ)

Question 2.1 (~SQ1)

Question 2.2 (~SQ2)

etc.

You can treat this as a hierarchical outline, for example, within 2.1 you could have (a), (b), etc.