Dr. Ramos is interested in studying how indoor temperature can influence people's sleep quality during the summer. A sample of 100 households is selected in which the residents keep their houses at 76 degrees during the summer. The residents wear a monitoring device that measures their sleep cycles for several nights to get baseline readings. Then, 50 of the homes are randomly assigned to the warm temperature condition in which the residents agree to keep their houses at 82 degrees Fahrenheit. In the other 50 houses, the residents agree to keep their houses at 70 degrees. For several nights, Dr. Ramos collects the sleep data for the people living in the houses to see how the residents' sleep patterns have changed. In this example, the sleep quality of participants is the ____ variable.
A) dependent
B) extraneous
C) correlational
D) independent

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

The sleep quality of participants is the dependent variable because it is the variable that is being measured and is expected to change as a result of changes in the independent variable, which is the temperature of the house. The extraneous variable could be other factors that could also influence sleep quality, such as noise or light levels in the bedroom, but these are not the main focus of the study. The study is not correlational because it involves manipulating the independent variable and comparing the effects on the dependent variable.

Dr Ramos Is Interested in Studying How Indoor Temperature Can