Cindy Ho,VP of Finance at Discrete Components,Inc.(DCI),theorizes that the discount level offered to credit customers affects the average collection period on credit sales. Accordingly,she has designed an experiment to test her theory using four sales discount rates (0%,2%,4%,and 6%)by randomly assigning five customers to each sales discount rate.In Cindy's experiment,"sales discount rate" is ______.
A) the dependent variable
B) a treatment variable
C) a blocking variable
D) a concomitant variable
E) a constant

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

In Cindy's experiment, the sales discount rate is being manipulated by randomly assigning different rates to different customers. This makes it a treatment variable, as it is the variable being directly manipulated in the experiment. The dependent variable would be the average collection period on credit sales, which is believed to be affected by the treatment variable. Blocking variables are used to control for potential confounding factors in the experiment, while concomitant variables are measured alongside the dependent variable to help explain its variation. The sales discount rate is not a constant in this experiment since it is being varied across different participants.