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Independent and Dependent Variable?

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UtterlyConfused1 On August 26, 2011




Upper Darby,
#1New Post! Aug 25, 2011 @ 22:03:25
Hey everyone, I ran into this forum while searching for a place that could potentially resolve my dillema.

I don't know why I'm having a hard time understanding this, but I am... My sociology professor keeps telling me that I'm wrong and so has the rest of the class but no matter how many times it's explained to me, I just don't get it...

I devised this experiment for my sociology course where I place a subject in front of a crosswalk where the light turns red. Now, the idea is to increment the number of confederates, who will cross the road, until the subject decides to finally cross the road. Now, I also needed an independent variable and I decided to make gender my independent variable as I can control the sample or subjects that are in the experiment.

My logic is that I want to measure the level of conformity within the different groups, male vs female. Since level of conformity is what I want to find out, it has to be my output or dependent variable. Now, in order to measure this, I have to have some quantitative way of doing it. Thus, what would determine the level of conformity, or output, would be the number of confederates it took to get the subject to cross the road. I can control the number of confederates, but I CANNOT control the number of confederates it took for the subject to cross the road. And so I feel this is valid.

However, I was told that since I can control the amount of confederates, that it is also an independent variable and that I have two sets of independent variables, gender and the number of confederates.

Since the majority of people claim that I'm wrong, I've had some serious doubts but as I said I'm just not seeing it. I'm hoping that someone can point out where I might have gone wrong in my logic and explain it carefully enough so that an idiot like me can understand it. I would really appreciate the assistance and thanks a lot.
Deal_With_It On May 24, 2022




Stevens Pass, Washington
#2New Post! Aug 26, 2011 @ 00:28:38
On your 'Topic" line you need to put the word 'HELP' you'll get a lot of responses.
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