KINE 2049 Chapter Notes - Chapter 6: Dependent And Independent Variables

• School: York University
• Department: Kinesiology & Health Science
• Course: KINE 2049
• Professor: Merv Mosher

Document Summary

Must have at least 2 levels for one independent variable (can be a change and the control group) Experimental control allows controlling or elimination of sources of extraneous variation that may affect the results. Causal factors can be examined by finding as many control variables as possible then keeping them constant throughout experiment. More efficient to do one experiment with many independent variables than to do a bunch of experiments, each w one independent variable (cid:862)co(cid:373)ple(cid:454)(cid:863) e(cid:454)peri(cid:373)e(cid:374)ts (cid:373)ake (cid:373)ore effi(cid:272)ie(cid:374)t use of resour(cid:272)es su(cid:272)h as ti(cid:373)e, (cid:373)o(cid:374)e(cid:455), su(cid:271)je(cid:272)ts, equipment, etc. They also are more realistic since certain things are naturally related. Most importantly, allow researchers to examine how independent variables act in combination: this is called interaction; how independent variables combine their effects on the dependent variable. Disadvantages of having multiple independent variables is that the experiment also gets more complex: as complexity increases, interpretation of results gets harder.