I haven't had either class in 4.5 years. I'm currently doing a research proposal for my Methods class and and I need to know three things. I need to know what a dependent variable and independent variable is and also a control structure. I remember both being mentioned in English and Psychology. I am doing my research proposal on battered women and their economic status. Here is what I believe: My independent variable is: The number of women I ask in a survey My dependent variable is: Their financial status My control strucutre: ??? I would ask my professor but she is out of town until Monday so do I have my variables correct and if not what are they. Also, what is a control structure, I thought it was something that comes between the variables. Is that true, if so what would my control strucutre be? Any help appreciated, thanks.
What does English have to do with variables and controls? I know many people on this board can explain this better, but here goes. What are you trying to explain? You're trying to explain the effect of socioeconomic status on the likelihood of being battered. In other words, are battered women more likely to be wealthy, poor, average or does it not matter? Your dependent variable is the variable you're trying to understand. You're trying to understand how women who are battered are different from women who aren't. Your independent variable is the variable that you're trying to determine affects your dependent variable, and if so, how? So in this case, socioeconomic status is your independent variable because you're trying to determine whether it "affects" the likelihood of being battered. A control structure is what allows you to come to any sort of conclusion. Obviously, there are many ways that battered women can be different from unbattered women. Battered women often were abused when they were little by their parents. Sometimes, their mother was abused by their father. There are other possible explanations. A control structure allows you to "control" the possible effects of other traits. You can't say socioeconomic status in and of itself differentiates battered women from unbattered women if you can't control other possible influences (or variables). So how do you control other traits? Well I'm not sure that you necessarily can without a large random sample. How are you getting your data? Is this a large survey with at least a hundred respondents? And are you asking lots of other questions about age, race, level of education, history of abuse, etc. (controlling variables)? If not, but say you only had women of a certain age, race, level of education, and history of abuse fill out your survey, you could make a case that you controlled for those factors since you eliminated potential differences. I couldn't come at you and say "hey, it's not economic status, it's age!" You would then say "well, all the women in my survey were all 40 years old, and 30% of those making less than $30,000 a year were battered compared to only 10% making more than $30,000 a year. How can you say it's age?" The problem with this is that your conclusions don't prove anything about women who aren't 40. So I'm not quite sure what your control structure is. A little more info about your data and how you plan to analyze your data might help. Are you using a statistical program like SPSS, SAS to do your analysis? I may not be able to get back to you until tomorrow, but someone else should be able to help though. Hope this is helpful.
