Week 3 Discussion Forum

You have specified your topic of interest and defined your research question. Now, it is time to identify two variables that you will be investigating. The first variable is the dependent variable, namely, the outcome of interest that you are studying. The second variable is the independent variable, the variable that you hypothesize is related to the dependent variable, namely, risk factor or protective factor. Example: How does childhood obesity (independent variable) impact academic performance (outcome/dependent variable) in elementary school children?

Find a peer-reviewed (original research) journal article (not a review or a meta-analysis or descriptive report) OR use the same article from last week’s discussion prompt (related to the topic and research question). When you choose your article or website, consider the people you intend to study for your final project. For example, you may choose to survey your adult Facebook friends and therefore you should find a resource that provides information on a population that has similar demographic characteristics. For this discussion, provide the following:

1. Citation information (the authors, the title of the article, the journal name, issue number, and page numbers)
2. A link to a copy of the peer-reviewed journal article or the website
3. Describe the main research question (main hypothesis and goal of the study should be similar to your topic and research question)
4. Identify main dependent and independent variable
5. Type of statistical analyses used to test the hypothesis