Assignment: Two
An educational researcher is interested in the relationship between students’ participation in
two after school programs and academic achievement. She states the following hypothesis in
the description of her study:
Children who participate in an after school program that emphasizes critical thinking skills
will score higher on measures of academic achievement and self-esteem than students who
participate in a program that emphasizes rote memorization.
What are the variables in this study?
Critical Thinking Skills
Academic Achievement
Self Esteem
Rote Memorization
What would be good names for the variables?
CT_Skills
Academic_Achievement
Self_Esteem
Rote_Memorization
Identify the independent variable(s) and dependent variable(s).
Independent variables are:
Critical Thinking Skills and Rote_Memorization
Dependent variables are:
Academic Achievement and Self Esteem
Describe how each variable varies (i.e., whether the variable is categorical or continuous).
Provide justification for why each variable varies the way you describe?
Critical Thinking Skills as an independent variable can be designed as categorical
(ordinal) in case of evaluate the skill activities using options like (Poor, Good, Very
Good, and Excellent), or as a continuous (scale) of evaluate the skill activities using
scores, for example a score from 1 to 100.
Rote Memorization as an independent variable can be designed as categorical (ordinal)
in case of evaluating the memorization activity using options like (low, moderate, and
fast), or as a continuous (scale) in case of evaluating the memorization activity using
scores or number of repeating the sentence till memorize it.
Academic Achievement as a dependent variable must be designed as a continuous
(scale) variable as it will represent the score of students’ academic achievement.
Self Esteem as a dependent variable must be designed as a continuous (scale) variable
as it will represent the score of students’ self-esteem.