When a variable leads to a spurious interpretation of research results, it is called

Question

Question

This question was previously asked in

UGC NET Paper 1: Held on 12th July 2022 Shift 1

Answer 1

A variable in research simply refers to a person, place, thing, or phenomenon that a researcher is trying to measure.

Key Points

Confounding Variables:

Confounding variables are a type of extraneous variable related to a study’s independent and dependent variables.
A variable must meet two conditions to be a confounder:
- It must be correlated with the independent variable. This may be a causal relationship.
- It must be causally related to the dependent variable.

Thus, when a variable leads to a spurious interpretation of research results, it is called Confounding variables.

Additional Information

Control Variable:

A control variable is anything that is held constant or limited in a research study.
Variables may be controlled directly by holding them constant throughout a study (e.g., by controlling the room temperature in an experiment), or they may be controlled indirectly through methods. like randomisation or statistical control (e.g., to account for participant characteristics like age in statistical tests).

External Variable:

External Variables are factors that are not manipulated as part of an experiment, but they may exert some influence on the dependent variable under study.