Question

(Choose one answer!)

A researcher who studies families has a focal hypothesis that high schoolers who eat more dinners with family members perform better on standardized tests. The researcher measures family dinners as the number of dinners high schoolers eat with their family members per month. The researcher measures test performance by having high schoolers take a standardized test with possible scores ranging from 0 - 100. The researcher runs a regression equation and the result produces the following equation:

Y^hat = 50 + 3X

For this same study of family dinners and test performance among high schoolers, now suppose that the researcher controlled for the family's annual income (in thousands) when the children were aged 12 (before high school). The researcher produces the following equation. (Family income is represented with Z.) Y^hat = 38 + .02X + 2Z

The researcher is controlling for family income because she thinks:

a) family income is a possible mediating (intervening) variable

b) family income is a possible source of spuriousness

c) family income is the new dependent variable

Answer 1

The answer is (a)

The researcher is controlling for family income because she thinks family income is a possible mediating (intervening) variable.

Intervening variable describe as a hypothetical variables that helps to explain the relationship between two variables.

Here, family income is explained the relationship between family dinners and test performance among high schoolers. The higher schoolers family dinner increased when more money one is likely to make. This means that high schoolers family will have more income to eat more dinners. So, intervening variable explains how independent variable affects the dependent variable.