Understanding Dependent and Independent Variables in Research Experiments and Hypothesis Testing

This chapter describes what are the dependentDependent and independentIndependent variables for conducting research experimentsResearch experiments. It introduces the readers to the different conditions to the use of the two types of variables (dependent and independent) in scientific research and hypothesis testingScientific research. The differences between the two variables and examples of each use case scenario are provided in this chapter. The relationship between the independent (IVIndependent Variable (IV)) and dependent (DV) variablesDependent Variable (DV) is the key foundation of most statistical data analysisStatistical data analysis or scientific tests. The authors note that an easy way to identify the independentIndependent or dependentDependent variableVariables in an experiment is: independentIndependent variables (IV) are what the researchers change or changes on its own, whereas dependentDependent variables (DV) are what changes as a result of the change in the independentIndependent variableVariables (IV). Thus, independentIndependent variables (IV) otherwise known as the “predictorPredictor variableVariables” are the cause while dependentDependent variables (DV) or the “responseResponse variableVariables” are the effect.