Types of Variable

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  Research Methods

  • Theresa White, Donald McBurney(Authors)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Cengage Learning EMEA

    (Publisher)

  The theory is an abstract statement. You must bring it down to cases. You can measure anxiety by the Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale and affiliation by how close people sit to each other in the experiment. These two measures constitute the variables of the study. The scores on the variables of anxiety and distance apart are related to one another as tests of the hypothesis. The relationship between the variables is taken as providing support for or against the particular theory that generated the experiment. Types of Variables To understand how variables are used and discussed in psychological research, you must understand several distinctions that are made among Types of Variables. Dependent and Independent Variables The most basic distinction among variables is between dependent variables and independent variables. The dependent variable is a measure of the behav-ior of the subject. The dependent variable is the response that the person or animal makes. This response may be a score on some sort of test, or it may be a behavioral response that can be measured using at least one of several different dimensions (Alberto & Troutman, 2006). For example, suppose that we were interested in whether the presence of music would change the running behavior of a participant named Yolanda. We could measure this behavior in several different ways or dimensions. If we were to measure her running using frequency , we would count the number of times that Yolanda went running, or perhaps the number of times that her foot hit the ground, because frequency is the number of times that a particular behavior occurs.

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  Experimental Design and Statistics for Psychology

  A First Course

  • Fabio Sani, John Todman(Authors)
  • 2008(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Blackwell

    (Publisher)

  THE NATURE OF PSYCHOLOGY EXPERIMENTS (I): VARIABLES AND CONDITIONS 17 SUMMARY OF CHAPTER • In an experiment, the things that are supposed to stand in a causal rela-tionship are called ‘variables’, as the levels of these things are free to vary. • There exist two Types of Variable. A variable whose levels are predetermined (manipulated) by the researcher is called an ‘independent variable’ (IV). A variable whose levels depend on, or are affected by, variations in the IV is called a ‘dependent variable’ (DV). • Manipulating the IV implies assigning participants to two ‘conditions’ of the experiment, which differ in terms of the level of the IV to which par-ticipants are exposed. In the ‘experimental condition’ the researcher delib-erately alters the normal level of the IV, while in the ‘control condition’ no attempt is made to make any alteration. • Assessing variations in the levels of the DV requires devising a plausible indicator of the thing represented by the DV, and a precise way to measure the DV. • Most variables may be used either as IVs or as DVs, depending on the nature of the experiment. However, some variables, such as age, sex and ethni-city, cannot be used as DVs in experiments, because their levels cannot be affected by variations in the IV. CHAPTER THREE The Nature of Psychology Experiments (II): Validity In the previous chapter we discussed some core concepts in experimental psychology with the aid of an example of an experiment. In this fictitious experiment, we pro-pose to test the hypothesis that people who are in a good mood perform better on intellectual tasks than people who are in a neutral mood. To test this hypothesis, we create two conditions (with participants randomly assigned to these conditions), one in which a group of participants watch a movie excerpt with a funny content (the experimental condition) and one in which another group of participants watch an excerpt with an emotionally neutral content (the control condition).

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  Industrial and Organizational Psychology

  Research and Practice

  • Paul E. Spector(Author)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  The best advice one can give a new researcher is to look to other people’s research for new hypotheses and research questions. The hypothesis and/or research question are the basis of a study, and in some ways are its most critical aspect. Without a specific and well-formulated question, it is diffi- cult to design a study that will adequately provide new insights. The question defines the objective of the study, as well as the phenomena of interest. When both are known, the researcher can design the study and choose the measurement techniques much more easily than when he or she has an imprecise idea of what he or she is trying to accomplish. Important Research Design Concepts The design of an investigation specifies the structure of the study. A large number of common designs are used in organizational research. Each has its own strengths and weaknesses, so that no design is necessarily superior to the others. Before discussing the various types of designs, we will define several concepts that must be understood first. Variables Variables are the building blocks of a design. A variable is an attribute or character- istic of people or things that can vary (take on different values). People’s abilities 24 Chapter 2 Research Methods in I-O Psychology (e.g., intelligence), attitudes (e.g., job satisfaction), behavior (e.g., absence from work), and job performance (e.g., weekly sales) are all common variables in organizational research. Every subject’s standing on each variable is quantified (converted to numbers) so that statistical methods can be applied. Variables can be classified into one of two types. In experiments, independent var- iables are those that are manipulated by the researcher, while dependent variables are those that are assessed in response to the independent variables. In other words, the independent variables are assumed to be the cause of the dependent variables.

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  Research Methods for Social Psychology

  • Dana S. Dunn(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  Types of independent variables Just as there are two broad types of social psychology experiments, there are also two types of independent variables used in experimental social psychology. Before we describe these two types of independent variables, we need to establish their logic based on the some ideas from the history of experimental psychology (see, e.g., Leahey, 2004). All experimentation in psychology relies on what is referred to as “S-O-R” psychology: “S” refers to the presentation of a stimulus to an organism—the “O,” which can be human or animal—in an effort to discern the “R” or response. Most often, the stimulus in experimental psychology is, of course, some independent variable designed to create change in one group but not another. Ideally, the response is a behavior, but with humans, self-reports, ratings, and the like are used alongside more traditional overt behaviors. Psychologists focus their theorizing on what happens inside the organism, for example, how thoughts, emotions, personal histories, and so on, can elicit particular responses. Social psychologists also do a variant of S-O-R psychology in that they try to explain how a social stimulus, some social independent variable (a person, other people, customs, folkways, the self), elicits social behaviors (actions, feelings, emotions, facial expressions, comments). Social psychologists, too, hypothesize about the internal, mental processes (e.g., emotion, cog- nition) that connect social stimuli to social responses. Indeed, most experiments are designed to demonstrate behaviors that are believed to result from social beliefs people acquire through experience and socialization. Social psychologists generally use one of two types of independent variables in their experiments: those causing behavior directly and those causing behavior indirectly.

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  Research in Psychology

  Methods and Design

  • Kerri A. Goodwin, C. James Goodwin(Authors)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  Situational variables are features in the environment that participants might encounter. For example, in a helping behavior study, the researcher interested in studying the effect of the num- ber of bystanders on the chances of help being offered might create a situation in which subjects encounter a person in need of help. Sometimes, the participant is alone with the person needing aid; at other times, the participant and the victim are accompanied by a group of either three or six bystanders. In this case, the independent variable is the number of potential helpers on the scene besides the participant, and the levels are zero, three, and six bystanders. Thus the experi- menter has created three situations. Sometimes, experimenters vary the type of task performed by subjects. One way to manipulate task variables is to give participants different kinds of problems to solve. For instance, research on the psychology of reasoning often involves giving people different kinds of logic problems to determine the kinds of errors people tend to make. Similarly, mazes can differ in degree of complexity, different types of illusions could be presented in a perception study, and so on. Instructional variables are manipulated by telling different groups to perform a particular task in different ways. For example, students in a memory task who are all shown the same list of words might be given different instructions about how to memorize the list. Some might be told to form visual images of the words, others might be told to form associations between adjacent pairs of words, and still others might be told simply to repeat each word three times as it is presented. Essential Features of Experimental Research 133 It is possible to combine several types of independent variables in a single study.

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  The Study of Living Control Systems

  A Guide to Doing Research on Purpose

  • Richard S. Marken(Author)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  This means learning to see behavior as being organized around the control of perceptual variables. The next step is to try to see what these variables might be. Ideas about what these variables are might be come from the names we commonly use for various behaviors, as well as from the analysis of existing research studies from a control theory perspective. The names given to behaviors typically refer to consistent results of an organism’s actions that are produced in the context of disturbance; that is, they refer to the reference states of a variable that is (or is related to) a controlled variable. Hints about possible controlled variables can also be found in the independent–dependent variable relationships that are found in conventional psychological research. These hints come from recognizing that independent variables are likely to be disturbances to variables that are being kept under control by system outputs that are the dependent variables in these experiments. The instructions given to participants in existing research studies also provide hints about the reference states of variables that participants in the experiment are to control. Once you have an idea of what variable or variables an organism might be controlling, you can refine that idea by looking at the control process from the point of view of the organism itself. The refined hypothesis about the controlled variable is then tested using the method of specimens, which involves testing one organism at a time under all experimental conditions. The results of this research are evaluated in terms of scientific rather than statistical significance. A result is only considered to be of scientific significance if it is virtually 100 percent replicable, which is true when the observed behavior has a correlation of at least 0.997 with the predictions of a model of that behavior.

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  Psychology Around Us

  • Nancy Ogden, Michael Boyes, Evelyn Field, Ronald Comer, Elizabeth Gould(Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  Notice in the way you state your hypothesis that you are saying that one thing results in another thing. The two things are called variables. A variable is a condition or event or situation—it can really be many things. In psychological research a condition or event that is thought to be a factor in changing another condition or event is known as an independent variable. We call it the independent variable because it is the one the researcher carefully sets and controls the level of to see what changes it will cause through its independent actions on other variables. In this study, playing or not playing a violent video game such as Call of Duty is an independent variable. A researcher could also change the nature of this variable to see how it affects aggressive behaviour. Aggressive behaviour (we could look at physical aggression or verbal aggressiveness) would be a dependent variable, the condition or event you expect to change as a result of varying the independent variable. It is the dependent variable because if our hypothesis is correct, then people’s scores on this variable will “depend” on their specific exposure to the independent variable. How about another example? If you wanted to see if drinking an energy drink would help you read more pages of your textbook in an hour of studying, you could read for an hour with- out any energy drink, drink one energy drink and read for an hour, then drink a second energy drink and read for another hour. You could count the number of pages you read in each of the 3 hours. So in this study, what is the independent variable? (It is the amount of energy drink con- sumed.) What is the dependent variable? (If you thought “pages read,” you are right.) Of course, just counting pages read tells you nothing about how well you have read them or what you will recall later from what you have read as you write the exam.

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  Applied Communication Research Methods

  Getting Started as a Researcher

  • Michael Boyle, Mike Schmierbach(Authors)
  • 2023(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  As was the case for independent variables, labeling something a dependent variable doesn’t necessarily mean it was caused by the independent variable. Additional elements must be considered to test for causality. Furthermore, a variable can serve as both an independent and dependent variable in different relationships. For example, whether people know that your shelter offers free clinic services might be a dependent variable when considering the relationship with exposure to social media messages. But it might be the independent variable when considering the relationship with the amount of money a person is willing to donate if knowing about the good an organization does makes people more willing to give. That said, certain variables can never or almost never be considered dependent variables. For example, age or race cannot be altered, and so anytime a variable like that is listed, you can be confident that it is serving as an independent variable or as a third variable.

  Third Variable

  Not every variable tested in research is necessarily thought of as a dependent or independent variable. Many variables serve other roles, and thus they are generically referred to as third variables. Most common is the measurement of third variables that are meant to serve as control variables. When a variable is used as a control variable, the researcher wants to remove (or control) the influence that variable has in the relationship between the independent and dependent variables. Other types of third variables are used in evaluating mediation and moderation. In these cases, the third variable is expected to have an important influence, somehow contributing to or altering the relationship between the independent and dependent variables. Regardless of the specific role that a third variable plays, it must be carefully explicated and effectively measured, just like any other variable.

  The use of control variables is especially important in evaluating the relationship between independent and dependent variables. In many cases, there are numerous variables that share relationships with one another. However, researchers are often interested in testing only specific relationships between dependent and independent variables, as dictated by hypotheses or research questions. Control variables allow researchers to increase their confidence in findings showing a relationship between the variables of interest if a relationship is found after control variables are included.

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  Naming the Mind

  How Psychology Found Its Language

  • Kurt Danziger(Author)
  • 1997(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications Ltd

    (Publisher)

  One difference between the situation in Sociology and that in Psychology was that, in the case of the latter, the adoption of the language of variables had a more automatic, non-reflective, quality. Such critical voices as existed (e.g. Cantril, 1950) were either marginalized or simply ignored. In Sociology, however, there was quite a powerful alternative tradition – particularly in the form of symbolic interactionism – which provided a basis for a direct attack on the inappropriate application of the concept of the variable. In 1956 Howard Blumer, a figure of considerable influence in American Sociology, launched a highly visible critique of the use of variables in his discipline. That use, he thought, was too often based on the ‘basic fallacy’ that independent variables exerted their influence ‘automatically’ without the intervention of interpretive processes among the persons acted upon. Analysis in terms of variables had become a way of eliminating questions of meaning from the explanation of human conduct. A variable constitutes ‘a distinct item with a unitary qualitative make-up’ (Blumer, 1956: 688), but the items that are important in the meaningful world of human action are neither clearly distinct from one another, nor do they remain qualitatively unchanged, irrespective of context. Blumer’s analysis may actually have strengthened the resolve of some of his colleagues to stick to their variables, for the attraction of this style of social scientific practice was precisely that it enabled one to replace the messiness and ambiguity of the ‘subjective’ analysis of meaning with the investigator’s distinct constructs that always remained the same, no matter what the context.

  A more detailed textual analysis of empirical papers published in psychological journals during the period under review indicates that talk about variables did indeed have the function of avoiding the issue of meaning. Explanation in terms of the meaning of situations for experimental subjects is consistently eschewed in favour of a model in which persons ‘respond’ under the ‘influence’ of ‘variables’ that have the solidity of physical objects. A typical example is a study of Rorschach responses in relation to depression scores on a widely used personality inventory, the MMPI (Blake and Wilson, 1950). Both measures are of course constructions of scientific psychology which depend on the interpretations that individuals make when placed in certain situations. However, when the study is reported in approved journal form, there is no reference to this. Instead, we get talk of depression as an ‘adjustmental variable [which] directly influences perceptual selectivity’ (p. 459). Referring to depression as an ‘adjustmental variable’ (‘operationally defined’ by MMPI scores) transforms it from a qualitative feature of subjective worlds into an objective entity that varies only in degree and that has causal effects on other objective entities, like ‘Rorschach deterrninants’ in our illustrative example. The language of variables was thus the perfect vehicle for an eclectic kind of neo-behaviourism that wished to banish subjective meaning as an explanatory principle without any commitment to specific

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