Cara’s Psychology Lab
Resource Collection 1, Part 1 – Experimental
Method
Identify the IV, DV and any extraneous and confounding variables
in the following scenarios.
1. A group of students noticed that another class of students
in their school
were getting higher grades in French than their class, who
had a different teacher to them, Mrs S, where as their group
had Miss B. They wondered if this was due to the teaching
style. They decided to carry out a research study to test
this.
What can you control? (i.e. your IV) ___The Teachers______
What are the conditions of your IV? _Cond. 1 – Mrs S, Cond. 2 –
Miss B._
What is your DV? ____Understanding of French (you’d need
to make this more specific also – e.g. measured by French
test results – this is known as operationalising the variables
i.e. making them measurable)_____
Can you identify any extraneous or confounding variables?
______Examples may include – their interest in learning French, their
innate ability, the time of day of their lessons – are they different?
Does one group learn in the morning and the other in the
afternoon? Their learning environment and so on.________
2. A researcher at a local university has been investigating a
new memory drug. The researcher wondered if his
participants would perform better on a memory test with
the new memory drug than another group of participants
would if they took a placebo.
What can you control? (i.e. your IV) __Memory Drug_____
Resource Collection 1, Part 1 – Experimental
Method
Identify the IV, DV and any extraneous and confounding variables
in the following scenarios.
1. A group of students noticed that another class of students
in their school
were getting higher grades in French than their class, who
had a different teacher to them, Mrs S, where as their group
had Miss B. They wondered if this was due to the teaching
style. They decided to carry out a research study to test
this.
What can you control? (i.e. your IV) ___The Teachers______
What are the conditions of your IV? _Cond. 1 – Mrs S, Cond. 2 –
Miss B._
What is your DV? ____Understanding of French (you’d need
to make this more specific also – e.g. measured by French
test results – this is known as operationalising the variables
i.e. making them measurable)_____
Can you identify any extraneous or confounding variables?
______Examples may include – their interest in learning French, their
innate ability, the time of day of their lessons – are they different?
Does one group learn in the morning and the other in the
afternoon? Their learning environment and so on.________
2. A researcher at a local university has been investigating a
new memory drug. The researcher wondered if his
participants would perform better on a memory test with
the new memory drug than another group of participants
would if they took a placebo.
What can you control? (i.e. your IV) __Memory Drug_____
