ch02 about variables and the setting variable example
In our example research, we asked: Does studying statistics improve your learning of them? Now we must decide what we mean by "studying" and how to measure it.
In research the factors we measure that influence behaviors--as well as the behaviors themselves--are called variables.
A variables is anything that, when measured, can produce two or more different scores.
A few of the variables found in behavioral research include your age, race, gender, and intelligence;
- your personality type or political affiliation;
- how anxiour, angry, or aggressive you are;
- how attractive you find someone;
- how hard you will work at a task;
- or how accurately you recall a situation
variable fall into two categories:
amount of a variable that is present,
- quantitative
instead a score classifies an individual on the basis of some characteristic,
- qualitative or classification
From some point view the qualitative is the descrete varialbe like the male female
and the A\B\C\D grade we get from a test!
For our study, we might measure "studying" using such variables as how much effort is put into studying or the number of times a chapter is read,
but we say we select
- the variable of the number of hours spent studying for a particular statistics test.
We might measure "Learning" by measuring how well statistical results can be interpreted or how quickly a specific procedure can be performed, but say we select the variable of
- grades on the statistics test
As in any research, we then study the law of nature by studying the relationship between variables.
