identify the independent and dependent variable

A group of college students were given a short course in speed-reading. The instructor was curious if a monetary incentive would influence performance on a reading test taken at the end of the course. Half the students were offered $5 for obtaining a certain level of performance on the test, the other half were not offered money.

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.

Does the offering of a reward effect test performance?

kendrick

In this experiment, the independent variable is the monetary incentive. It is the variable that is manipulated or changed by the researcher. In this case, the independent variable has two levels: the group of students offered $5 and the group of students not offered money.

The dependent variable is the performance on the reading test. It is the variable that is measured to determine the effect of the independent variable. In this case, the dependent variable is the level of performance on the reading test taken at the end of the course by the college students.

To identify the independent and dependent variable, you can look for the variable that is being manipulated or changed by the researcher (independent variable) and the variable that is measured to determine the effect of the manipulation (dependent variable).