Question

Margaret, a researcher, wants to conduct a field experiment to determine the effects of a shopping mall's ambience on the purchasing behavior of consumers. However, she has to deal with other influencing factors such as noise, crowd, and space distribution. She wants to avoid them by using randomization. In this scenario, noise, crowd, and space are ________ variables.

Answer 1

Answer:

In this scenario, noise, crowd, and space are extraneous variables.

Explanation:

When you conduct a study, you wish to see if an independent variable has influence over a dependent variable. Any other variable that is not the independent one but that can also interfere in the study's results are called extraneous variables. In other words, extraneous variable are sort of undesirable variables, the ones you are not intentionally studying. In Margaret's experiment, noise, crowd, and space (extraneous variables) distribution can influence her dependent variable (purchasing behavior), but are not the independent variable (shopping mall's ambiance).