Monday, December 12, 2011

What are the primary independent variable and the Control variable?

People of higher statues are more inclined to discriminate against people of a lower status


Concepts- social statues, discrimination


Research question- Are people of higher statues are more inclined to discriminate against people of a lower status?


Independent variable- statues


Dependent variable- Discrimination of people of a lower static|||An independent variable is the event manipulated "independently" by the experimenter. The dependent variable is the result we observe.





In the design of experiments and data analysis, control variables are those variables that are not changed throughout the trials in an experiment because the experimenter is not interested in the effect of that variable being changed for that particular experiment. (In other words, control variables are extraneous factors, possibly affecting the experiment, that are kept constant so as to minimize their effects on the outcome.) An example of a control variable in an experiment might be keeping the pressure constant in an experiment designed to test the effects of temperature on bacterial growth.





In a scientific experiment, the controlled variable never changes; it is the same for every setup. For example, in an evaporation experiment, the area must be the same.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_var鈥?/a>





So in your experiment, you plan to manipulate the status of the person your subjects will interact with. Your hypothesis is that the subject will be more likely to discriminate in some way against a person of lower status.





What you need to control are any other factors that might lead to discrimination, such as what the contact says and how he says it. One possible way to control these factors is to use an introduction to manipulate the supposed status of the contact, but to use the exact same person--appearance, language, accent, etc.--as the contact.





If this or any other answer to your question helps you resolve this issue, please select a "best answer." This motivates people to help you and rewards their research in your behalf.





Cheers,


Bruce|||the independent variable is the variable that you can effect


in this case it would be the status of the people because you can choose if you want them to be higher or lower. as far as primary independent i have not heard of that but there should only be one independent variable otherwise your results won't be certain because you couldn't tell what variable caused the reaction





a control variable is anything that you don't change as you experiment.

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