Measuring the effect that an action has on a situation, demonstrating a causal relationship
- Cause and effect criteria are met by the cause occurring before the effect of two observable and measurable actions or events and elimination of all other possible causes.
- Through random assignment, experimental group participants are exposed to manipulations of an independent variable, while the control group is not.
- All other conditions are held exactly the same for both groups to rule out the influence of extraneous variables.
- The dependent variable is measured to see if there is a significant difference for those exposed to the manipulation.
- An operational definition defines exactly how the dependent variable is being measured: ...