CMN 2101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Internal Validity, Longitudinal Study, Dependent And Independent Variables

• School: University of Ottawa
• Department: Communication
• Course: CMN 2101
• Professor: Mohammed El Hashash

Document Summary

Able to control the environment and all the variables to get an accurate result. Classical experimental research has high internal validity (accurate) but low external validity (unable to generalize- does not necessarily mirror real life scenarios) Dependent variable: the variable we seek to understand (the one we are observing eg. amount of tips a server receives) Independent variable: the variable that we manipulate (eg. interaction with customers) - also called treatment variable. Control variable: a constant variable or set of variables that you control (eg. male/female servers, food pricing etc. ) The researcher to observe causation (eg. will i get cancer if i continue to smoke?) Not able to easily do a longitudinal study or study trends. Internal: the ability to eliminate alternative explanations of the dependent variable (the causal factor of change in the dependent variable is sole on manipulation of the independent variable)