I would like to set my variables at the top of my class instead of in the method

You can’t initialize Views outside of a method like this

CheckBox cb1 = (CheckBox) findViewById(R.id.cb1);
CheckBox cb2 = (CheckBox) findViewById(R.id.cb2);

because that would mean that these lines run before onCreate() which results in these variables being null and throw a NPE when you try to call methods on these variables. This is because you call setContentView(R.layout.your_layout) inside of onCreate() and your Views “live” inside of that layout. This means that they can’t be initialized until your layout has been inflated by calling setContentView(). You must call setContentView() before trying to initialize your Views. There is no way around that part.

What some people do that might help is to create a separate function that initializes these variables just after setContentView() is called. Something like this

public class MyActivity
    // declare your Views so they are global to the class
    TextView tv;
   // more views
    @Override
    public void onCreat(stuff)
    {
       // super call
       setContentView(R.layout.my_layout);
       init();

then in your init() function initialize all of the Views you have declared

private void init()
{
     tv = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.myTextView);
     // more initializations
}

but you can just initialize them in onCreate(), onResume() or wherever as long as it’s after setContentView()
Declaring and initializing them in this way will make sure they are all available to other functions, listeners, inner classes, etc… of the Activity. And if you have a lot of Views it may lessen the “clutter” a bit.