Identify the conditions of the independent variable , the dependent variable , their scales of measurement , which measure of central tendency and variability to compute and which scores you would use in the computation . We test whether participants laugh longer ( in seconds ) to jokes told on a sunny or rainy day . We test whether babies whose mother's were or were not recently divorced , measuring whether the babies lost weight , gained weight , or remained the same . We compared a group of adult children of alcoholics to a group whose parents were not alcoholics. In each , we measure participants income . We count the number of creative ideas produced by participants who are paid either 5 , 10 , or 50 cents per idea . We measure the number of words in the vocabulary of 2 year-olds as a function of whether they have 0,1,2 or 3 older siblings .

Answer 1

An independent variable is the potential stimulus or cause, usually directly manipulated by the experimenter, so it could also be called a manipulative variable.

A dependent variable is the response or measure of results.