Cara’s Psychology Lab
Resource Collection 1, Part 1 – Experimental Method
‘The Variables’
There are 4 key variables that we must look at when planning our research
experiment, these are….
The Independent Variable (IV)
The Dependent Variable (DV)
Extraneous Variables
Confounding Variables
The IV The Independent Variable is the part of your investigation
that you control. You adjust your independent variable to
measure changes in your Dependent Variable.
What does this mean? So, for example, if I decided to
research the effect of colour on mood, I would be able to
control what colours I could use. Therefore, my IV would
be – colour.
However, it’s not quite that simple – having an IV of
‘colour’ leaves too many questions, such as ‘which
colour?’.
We need to make it way more specific – so we identify ‘the
conditions of the IV’.
For example, if our IV is colour – we may decide that we
want to look at the impact of the colours Green and
Orange. Therefore, the conditions of the IV are:
Condition 1 – Green
Condition 2 – Orange
Let’s get to understand the Dependent Variable before we
move on to understand what we do with the IV.
The DV The Dependent Variable (DV) is what we use to measure
the effect of the IV. We would expect that the IV will
Extraneous variables – these are any variables in our environment
that have the potential to influence our Dependent Variable. So for
example, if we are looking at the influence of colour on mood,©caraleeedwards2025
if we want
to be able to claim that it’s the colour that is having an influence, we need
to think about any variables within our environment that could also
Resource Collection 1, Part 1 – Experimental Method
‘The Variables’
There are 4 key variables that we must look at when planning our research
experiment, these are….
The Independent Variable (IV)
The Dependent Variable (DV)
Extraneous Variables
Confounding Variables
The IV The Independent Variable is the part of your investigation
that you control. You adjust your independent variable to
measure changes in your Dependent Variable.
What does this mean? So, for example, if I decided to
research the effect of colour on mood, I would be able to
control what colours I could use. Therefore, my IV would
be – colour.
However, it’s not quite that simple – having an IV of
‘colour’ leaves too many questions, such as ‘which
colour?’.
We need to make it way more specific – so we identify ‘the
conditions of the IV’.
For example, if our IV is colour – we may decide that we
want to look at the impact of the colours Green and
Orange. Therefore, the conditions of the IV are:
Condition 1 – Green
Condition 2 – Orange
Let’s get to understand the Dependent Variable before we
move on to understand what we do with the IV.
The DV The Dependent Variable (DV) is what we use to measure
the effect of the IV. We would expect that the IV will
Extraneous variables – these are any variables in our environment
that have the potential to influence our Dependent Variable. So for
example, if we are looking at the influence of colour on mood,©caraleeedwards2025
if we want
to be able to claim that it’s the colour that is having an influence, we need
to think about any variables within our environment that could also
