A variable in research simply refers to a person, place, thing, or phenomenon that you are trying to measure in some way. For instance, you might be tempted to represent the variable “Employment Status” with the two attributes “employed” and “unemployed.” But these attributes are not necessarily mutually exclusive – a person who is looking for a second job while employed would be able to check both attributes! An educational program can have varying amounts of ‘time on task’, ‘classroom settings’, ‘student-teacher ratios’, and so on.
It took me the longest time to learn this distinction.
OK, so what does that mean? I originally thought that an independent variable was one that would be free to vary or respond to some program or treatment, and that a dependent variable must be one that depends on my efforts (that is, it’s the treatment). Knowledge Base written by Prof William M.K. We can, if it is useful, assign quantitative values instead of (or in place of) the text values, but we don’t have to assign numbers in order for something to be a variable. (Of course, I’m someone who gets confused about the signs for ‘arrivals’ and ‘departures’ at airports – do I go to arrivals because I’m arriving at the airport or does the person I’m picking up go to arrivals because they’re arriving on the plane!). The dependent variable is what is affected by the independent variable – your effects or outcomes. In fact the independent variable is what you (or nature) manipulates – a treatment or program or cause. In addition to being exhaustive, the attributes of a variable should be mutually exclusive, no respondent should be able to have two attributes simultaneously. Yes, we do, but technically speaking, each of the categories in a question like that is its own variable and is treated dichotomously as either “checked” or “unchecked”, attributes that are mutually exclusive.
But this is entirely backwards! Each variable should be exhaustive, it should include all possible answerable responses.
The variable city consists of text values like New York or Sydney. © 2020, Conjoint.ly, Sydney, Australia. The way to deal with this is to explicitly list the most common attributes and then use a general category like “Other” to account for all remaining ones. PDF | On Jan 29, 2007, Nina Baur and others published Variables | Find, read and cite all the research you need on ResearchGate Or, the variable agreement might be defined as having five attributes: Another important distinction having to do with the term ‘variable’ is the distinction between an independent and dependent variable. 183.
You won’t be able to do very much in research unless you know how to talk about variables. For legal and data protection questions, please refer to Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy. The best way to understand the difference between a dependent and independent variable is that the meaning of each is implied by what the words tell us about the variable you are using. You may find it challenging to understand just what variables are in the context of research, especially those that deal with quantitative data analysis. The key to designing any experiment is to look at what research variables could affect the outcome.There are many types of variable but the most important, for the vast majority of research methods, are the independent and dependent variables.The independent variable is the core of the experiment and is isolated and manipulated by the researcher. This distinction is particularly relevant when you are investigating cause-effect relationships.
But don’t we often use questions on surveys that ask the respondent to “check all that apply” and then list a series of categories?
Gain insights you need with unlimited questions and unlimited responses. Variables play a critical role in the psychological research process. ABN 56 616 169 021.
An attribute is a specific value on a variable. While this might seem obvious, it is often rather tricky in practice. by Prof William M.K. Similarly, country can be considered a variable because a person’s country can be assigned a value. A variable is any entity that can take on different values. For example, if you are studying the effects of a new educational program on student achievement, the program is the independent variable and your measures of achievement are the dependent ones. For instance, age can be considered a variable because age can take different values for different people or for the same person at different times. Trochimhosted by Conjoint.ly. What then are variables, and how do you use variables in your research? On the other hand, if you exhaust all the possibilities with some variables – religion being one of them – you would simply have too many responses.
Variables aren’t always ‘quantitative’ or numerical. Finally, there are two traits of variables that should always be achieved. Variables in a research work are widely used to obtain correct inferences.
An educational program can have varying amounts of ‘time on task’, ‘classroom settings’, ‘student-teacher ratios’, and so on. For instance, in much social research and in program evaluation, we consider the treatment or program to be made up of one or more variables (i.e., the ‘cause’ can be considered a variable). Accordingly, variables are classified into two sets namely dependent and independent variables (Cohen, Manion & Morrison, 2000).
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