This video we're going to be talking about variables. So a variable is literally any construct of interest that can vary, or just differ, from person to person or from situation to situation. Now, like with any science, we're going to be working with independent and dependent variables. So the independent variable, or the iv, is going to be the variable that is believed to influence or change another variable. In other words, this is your hypothesized cause of something else.
And then, in contrast, your dependent variable, or the dv, is the variable that is going to be measured or observed in your study and this is assumed to be influenced by the independent variable. So, in other words, this is your hypothesized effect. This is the effect that you are trying to investigate or understand. Now one little tip that I have always used to help me differentiate the independent and dependent variables, I think I learned this when I was, like, 8 years old and I have always used it, is just to remember that the dependent variable depends on the independent variable to help it change. Right?
So, again, this is the hypothesized cause. This should be the effect. So this variable needs this variable to help it change. So that's how I always remember it, and hopefully that can help you. Now in psychology, our independent variable can be manipulated or it can be measured.
And this is an important point to take note of because quite often when we learn about IVs and DVs, especially, like, in high school and middle school and stuff, it's in the context of experiments. And in that case, your IV is always going to be manipulated. However, in psychology, that's just not always possible. Quite often we're working with variables that you just have to measure, and I will show you an example of that in just one second. So do you so just keep that in mind as you go through your psych course.
However, in contrast to that, dependent variables are always going to be measured. So there is never really a case where we are manipulating a dependent variable. They are always measured. So to give you some examples of what that can look like, over here in example 1, we are looking at essentially a drug trial. So we have drug 1, drug 2, and a placebo being presented to our participants.
A placebo is just a sugar pill. And then we're looking at symptom improvement. Let's just say these are drugs that improve depression symptoms, and then we're looking to see if depression symptoms are indeed improving. So in this situation, our independent variable is going to be this drug. Right?
Because the drug is hypothesized to cause some kind of change in the symptoms. Right? So this is our hypothesized cause. So this is our IV. Then symptom improvement, the hypothesized effect, right, is our dependent variable.
So here, again, just remember symptom improvement is theoretically dependent on getting these drugs. Right? So that is a case where our independent variable is being manipulated. Now if we look over here at example 2, like I said, that's just not always possible. So here we're looking at if a person's socioeconomic status or how much money they have, if that is related to their level of education.
So, you know, does having low socioeconomic status for your entire life impact the level of education that you can attain? Now obviously, we cannot manipulate a person's socioeconomic status. It just is what it is. So that's a case where we have to just measure our independent variable. And then again here our level of education would be our dependent variable.
So in this case, level of education is hypothesized to be dependent on your socioeconomic status. Alright. So that is our little introduction into variables, and I'll see you guys in our next video. Bye bye.