Judith is conducting an experiment on mood and problem solving. She plans to have study participants read either a funny story or a sad story before taking a math test. WHat is the dependent variable in Judith's study?

a) the type of story participants read

b) the experimental group of participants

c) the number of math problems participants correctly solve

d) the personality of the participants who choose to be in the study

The correct option is C: the number of math problems participants correctly solve

Explanation:

A dependable variable is simply the variable in a research or experiment that is being tested. When the researcher alters the independent variable, there is a change in the dependable variable, and this change is recorded. From the experiment, since participants are either already sad or happy, depending on the type of story they read, Judith want to measure the effect of these moods on the problem solving ability, hence the number of questions answered would depend on the mood of the participants.

Option c

Explanation:

The word Dependent in the above question means, to depend on something or something is dependent on the other before it becomes realistic, to explain in a nut shell.

Now, Judith is conducting an experiment on mood and problem solving, and she is basing the experiment on two things

1. The participants must read a funny or sad story

2. Mathematics Problem to be solved.

But looking at the dependent factor she is trying to create, the story the participants must read either funny or sad, is what the mathematics problem depends on, so we can say the dependent variable is the mathematics problem while the independent variable is the story.

The story is independent because it does not depend on anything, it is a must they read a story before answering the problem.

The mathematics problem is independent because, they wont be attended to if the participant don't read a story, so they are depending on the participant mood which is activated from the type of story they read.

So story is independent, while the maths is the dependent, and the participant are the constant factor because they are the ones to answer the questions.