Independent variable

tricky1890 · Post by **tricky1890** » Sat Mar 17, 2007 1:09 pm

I am doing a psychology practical about gender differences in iq estimations which also involves the subject estimating their mother and fathers iq. One independent variable is gender (an attribute variable) while the other concerns these three questions. Would you mind estimating your own Iq. ........... your mothers Iq, .......... your fathers Iq. Obviously the independent variable in these questions are the self, mother and father. But what are these three called collectively. Eg testing memory performance in the morning and evening... ie the IV is time of day at two levels (morning and evening). So if morning and evening represent time of day what does the self mother and father represent in terms of the IV.

MelissaB · Post by **MelissaB** » Sat Mar 17, 2007 1:26 pm

This is a forum for scientists to help primary school students with science fair projects, not for us to help you with your homework. Also, please do not start new threads on the same topic. That said, an expert pointed you to a useful resource in the first thread you posted; I suggest you go look at that.

drhamill · Post by **drhamill** » Sat Mar 17, 2007 2:37 pm

Thanks for expanding! Your new explanation helps me to understand much better what you are asking. Sounds like a fun project. I agree that the gender of the test subject is the independent variable - the measure you are changing on purpose. However, by my understanding of variables, I would not consider the three questions you are asking (estimate IQ of self, mother, or father) to be independent variables. Rather, they are outcomes that you will attempt to compare. You will presumably have a couple ways to look at your data. For example male self-estimate vs female self-estimate, male self-estimate vs parental estimate, female maternal estimate vs female paternal estimate, etc. As you can see, this data analysis could get rather complicated. You should think about your specific hypothesis, and then analyze the data in a way that might give you insight into your hypothesis. Does the data support your hypothesis?

I would recommend you look through some of the human behavior project ideas on the Sciencebuddies website. It has some good advice on how to ask questions of, and interpret responses from, human participants. (It also has information on getting informed consent from your human subjects; you should check with your teacher about this.)

If you have access to the following article, you might find it useful:
Petrides, K. V., Furnham, A., & Martin, G. N. (2004). Estimates of emotional and psychometric intelligence: Evidence for gender-based stereotypes. The Journal of Social Psychology, 144, 149-
162. Here's a link to the abstract: http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/heldref/acc ... tereotypes

What I like about this paper is that it states several clear hypotheses (including gender biases in predicting IQ) and through the use of statistical analysis makes some sense of what the data shows. (I wouldn't expect you would do such detailed statistical analysis! But the paper still gives good ideas on the types of comparisons you migth want to look at.) It mentions they gave participants a two-page questionairre to give them some general info on IQ scores, but unfortunately it doesn't give full details on it. It does reference some other papers if you were keen to find out more.

As you no doubt know, there's lots to think about in planning a well-designed study. Hope I haven't added too much confusion.

p.s. If you write back, please use the reply button rather than start a new post. That way if someone else wants to weigh in on the subject, they'll know the whole story.

tricky1890 · Post by **tricky1890** » Mon Mar 19, 2007 4:25 pm

The teacher told us there was 2 I.V's one was gender and the other was something we varied in the question. the only thing we varied in the question was self mother and father so I have to know wht to call them together. Just like hot/cold is temperature, loud/quiet is noise level and morning/evening is time of day

drhamill · Post by **drhamill** » Tue Mar 20, 2007 9:30 am

I don't feel I know how to help you. It seems your teacher has a very specific idea of what you are doing / need to do. I would encourage you to ask your teacher to clarify your confusion with respect to these variables.

You said: "Just like hot/cold is temperature, loud/quiet is noise level and morning/evening is time of day"
And in a similar way, you want to know what to call self, mother, and father collectively? How about family members?