variable
• a condition in an experiment or a
characteristic of an entity, person, or object
that can take on different categories, levels, or
values and that can be quantified (measured).
Types of variables
• Independent Variables
• An Independent variable is a variable based on
which the dependent variable is predicted.
This variable is chosen, manipulated and
measured by the researcher aimed at figuring
out its relationship with other variables.
• Example 1: “Various social classes have an
effect on knowledge improvement”. In this
example, the various social classes and
knowledge improvement are considered as
the independent and dependent variables,
respectively.
• Dependent Variables
• Defendant variable is a variable in which the
researcher is interested and in contrary to the
independent variable, the dependent variable
is not in the control of the researcher, and
he/she is not able to manipulate it.
• Example 1: Investigating the effect of women’s
employment on family life satisfaction__
Women’s employment is an independent and
family life satisfaction is a dependent variable.
• Extraneous and confounding variables
• Extraneous variables are those that produce an
association between two variables that are not causally
related. For example, if we have an association between
two variables (X and Y), and that association is due to the
fact that both X and Y are affected by a third variable (Z),
then we would say that the association between X and Y
is spurious and that it is a result of the effect of an
extraneous variable (Z). Of course, Z would be an
extraneous variable when it comes to that particular
relationship, but it may not be for other relationships.
• Example of a confounding variableYou collect data
on sunburns and ice cream consumption. You find
that higher ice cream consumption is associated
with a higher probability of sunburn. Does that
mean ice cream consumption causes sunburn?
• Here, the confounding variable is temperature:
hot temperatures cause people to both eat more
ice cream and spend more time outdoors under
the sun, resulting in more sunburns.