An administrator believes that the placement of motivational posters on the walls in classrooms of academic buildings will lead to increased GPAs (grade point averages) at his school
To test his theory, he randomly assigns certain classrooms within the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences to have the posters while others do not. None of the remaining four academic colleges have any posters placed in their classrooms. What is the independent variable in this study?
A) academic college
B) classroom wall hangings
C) gender of the student
D) grade point average
Answer: B
Rationale: In an experiment, the independent variable is the variable that the experimenter manipulates to distinguish between the different groups and the dependent variable is the variable which is measured and subsequently compared across all groups. The goal of an experiment is to determine if manipulating the independent variable affects the dependent variable. In this example, the goal is to determine if manipulating the posters affects the GPA scores.
Diff: 3
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