STATISTICS

Is it a quantifiable variable?
The color of the sky over a 2 year period. Price for 6 months. The likeability of the president on a scale of 1 to 5

during his first year n office. The city of Baguio during the last ten summer seasons. The number of people in poverty in the Philippines for the year 2009. Differences between men and women in the average number of words in their spoken sentences for men and women who work in talk radio.

Independent vs. Dependent

Relationship between these two types of variables.
Dependent variable: its value or behavior is

considered reliant, upon the value of the independent variable but not the other way around. Independent variable: its value does not change according to the value of the dependent variable

Example:
A simple cause-and-effect example:

A researcher is studying the water levels of a small lake in the mountains, and he predicts the water levels of the lake in late spring are dependent on the amount of snowfall accumulated over the fall and winter months in the elevations higher than the lake. He hypothesizes that the more snow the higher elevations receive, the higher the water level will be. Each spring, for several years, you measure the water levels and snow levels.

A researcher is studying the water levels of a small lake in the mountains, and he predicts the water levels of the lake in late spring are dependent on the amount of snowfall accumulated over the fall and winter months in the elevations higher than the lake. He hypothesizes that the more snow the higher elevations receive, the higher the water level will be. Each spring, for several years, you measure the water levels and snow levels.

Water level is dependent on the amount of snow.

More snow causes more runoff which in turn, flows into the lake, causing the water level to rise. Conversely, the amount of snow is independent of the amount of water in the lake. That is, an increase in water does not magically cause more snow to fall.
Therefore, water level is the dependent variable and

snow level is the independent variable.

Other example:
Imagine you are studying the relationship between how much

time a teacher spends with a student and that students gender. Which is the independent variable and which is the dependent variable? Questions to ask: might time influence gender? might gender influence time? is it possible being male or female is somehow dependent on how much time a teacher spends with boys and girls respectively? might the time spent with boys and girls somehow be dependent on whether the student is male or female?

Therefore, gender is the independent variable and

time spent is the dependent variable.

A helpful tip
If one variable is describing things that occur before

the things described by another variable happen, then the first variable can usually be taken as the independent variable and second as the dependent variable. Kalof, Dan, and Dietz (2008)

Test your understanding of independent and dependent variables

Scenario 1 Corporation XYZ wishes to study the correlation between safety training and the number of accidents at various production sites. Those responsible for the training believe that safety training will help reduce the amount of accidents. The numbers of safety hours work teams receive and the number of accidents each team experiences are recorded for a period of a year after training occurs. What are the independent and dependent variables?

Test your understanding of independent and dependent variables

Scenario 2 A researcher examining communication in the work place believes face-to-face communication compared to phone or e-mail communication is more effective in conveying information in one-to-one situations. In an experiments, the researcher tests a) how much information subjects retain when they are given that information b) face-to-face, c) over the phone and d) through e-mail. Of the four variables given, which is the dependent variable.

Test your understanding of independent and dependent variables

Scenario 3

A researcher is studying the use of a certain grammatical features according to the socioeconomic status of a speaker. In a pilot study involving speakers from a particular city, the lower the socioeconomic status within participants of the sample population examined, the more this grammatical feature appears in the population. He researcher wants to test the hypothesis that the socioeconomic status influences the frequency of the grammatical feature for a given socioeconomic group for urban populations in the pacific northwest, and is planning on drawing a random sample of speakers from three cities in the region. What is the primary independent variable and the dependent variable?