SOCI 328 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Shoe Size, Dependent And Independent Variables
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The causing variable referred to as the independent or explanatory variable. The caused variable referred to as dependent or response variable. Researches interested in investigating causal relationships between 2 variables. Single categorical variable can be represented by set of dichotomous variables. E. g. suppose we want to asses people"s immigrant status by differentiating between: Occasionally useful to create categorical variable from continuous variable and use categorical variable instead. Allows for more targeted focus on particular value. Statistical research depends on variables that measure characteristics of cases (people, countries, etc. ) This means operationalized variable is a good representative of the abstract conceptual variable. We could design a single categorical variable immigration with three categories. Has to produce same results in repeated uses and be consistent regardless of who is doing the measuring. In statistical analysis, unit of analysis refers to cases. Variables at different units of analysis seem pretty similar at first but can be very different.
