Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

I need to identify the independent and dependent variable in my research.
The main part of the article and research is" The adult second language acquisition of grammatical gender and the transfer from the first language of Dutch German, Spanish and English speakers."

Hi!
An easy way of identifying independent and dependent variables is by using the following template:
The Effect of (independent variable) on (dependent variable)
You can also look at this website which explains the difference between the two:
http://www.cool-science-projects.com/in ... ables.html
In this case, I would think that you are studying the effect of the transfer from the first language/language acquisition on Dutch, German, Spanish, and English speakers. Good luck on your project!

I need to identify the independent and dependent variable in my research.
The main part of the article and research is" The adult second language acquisition of grammatical gender and the transfer from the first language of Dutch German, Spanish and English speakers."

Hi there,

What an interesting project!

Typically, the independent variable is the thing that you change or that naturally changes, and the dependent variable is the thing that responds to those changes (also known as the "response variable").

In your case, it looks like your dependent variable is the ability to acquire a second language, or how well someone is able to acquire a second language. This is the "response" you're looking for.

Depending on the design of your study, you may have a few different independent variables:
- the first language (Dutch German, Spanish, or English)
- the age of your subjects
- the gender of your subjects

I hope that helps. Feel free to post back with more questions.

Good luck,
Heather

It looks like you've gotten pretty good help already, but here's something that might help you with the hypothesis:
When you write your hyp. it should be an "If...then..." statement, right? Put the independent variable first and the dependent variable second. You can think of it as "If - Independent" because they both start with the letter "i."

That usually helps me with remembering which is which
Good luck!