What Are Variables Of Interest? Understanding The Definition In Research Methods
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What is a variable of interest in a study? Variables of interest are all of the factors or features that change that you would like to focus on within the context of a study. The variables of interest include the dependent variable (or criterion), the independent variables, and the control variables.
Why are thinking about the variables of interest important? In any particular domain, there are infinite number of factors that can impact that domain. For example, weather could impact the personality characteristics of a person on a given day.
However, it is not productive to focus on all of these infinite number of factors. Rather, what people do is focus on the factors that matter, and group all the other ones within a separate variable that we call ‘error.’ The variables of interest are these factors that are important to you.
I also would like to discuss why it is important to call these factors variables of interest rather than dependent versus independent variables. It is rarely the case that the dependent and independent variables are truly ‘independent.’ Everything in the world relates to everything else. Some researchers try to reduce this problem by using experiments, however, the non-manipulated variables can be still highly related.
This interrelated next problem is even more important in research on archival data.
Rather than using the strong language of independent and dependent variables, some researchers opt to say variables of interest as it removes the causal language.
Interested in learning more about the variables of interest, check out:
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