Professor White Is Studying How Cancer Patients Are Coping with Their

Professor White is studying how cancer patients are coping with their illness by giving them one of the following sets of instructions: they are to keep a daily diary and write about anything,keep a daily diary and write about how they are trying to cope with their illness,or not told to keep any diary whatsoever.After following this protocol for a month,Professor White then measures the cancer patients' self-reported level of depression.The independent variable in this hypothetical study is and the dependent variable is .

A) the type of diary kept,if any; the progression of the cancer
B) the type of diary kept,if any; the self-reported level of depression
C) the self-reported level of depression; the type of diary kept,if any
D) the cancer patients; the self-reported level of depression
E) how well the subjects are coping; the type of diary kept,if any