What is Variable And Types of Variables

 

Variables: Definition, Types of Variable in Research

Variable Definition in Research

A variable is any property, a characteristic, a number, or a quantity that increases or decreases over time or can take on different values (as opposed to constants, such as n, that do not vary) in different situations.

When conducting research, experiments often manipulate variables. For example, an experimenter might compare the effectiveness of four types of fertilizers.

In this case, the variable is the ‘type of fertilizers’. A social scientist may examine the possible effect of early marriage on divorce.

Here early marriage is the variable. A business researcher may find it useful to include the dividend in determining the share prices. Here dividend is the variable.

Effectiveness, divorce and share prices are also variables because they also vary as a result of manipulating fertilizers, early marriage, and dividends.

Types of Variable

1. Qualitative Variables.
2. Quantitative Variables.
3. Discrete Variable.
4. Continuous Variable.
5. Dependent Variables.
6. Independent Variables.
7. Background Variable.
8. Moderating Variable.
9. Extraneous Variable.
10. Intervening Variable.
11. Suppressor Variable.

Qualitative Variables

An important distinction between variables is between the qualitative variable and the quantitative variable.

Qualitative variables are those that express a qualitative attribute such as hair color, religion, race, gender, social status, method of payment, and so on. The values of a qualitative variable do not imply a meaningful numerical ordering.

The value of the variable ‘religion’ (Muslim, Hindu, ..,etc.) differs qualitatively; no ordering of religion is implied. Qualitative variables are sometimes referred to as categorical variables.

For example, the variable sex has two distinct categories: ‘male’ and ‘female.’ Since the values of this variable are expressed in categories, we refer to this as a categorical variable.

 

Similarly, place of residence may be categorized as being urban and rural and thus is a categorical variable.

Categorical variables may again be described as nominal and ordinal.

Ordinal variables are those which can be logically ordered or ranked higher or lower than another but do not necessarily establish a numeric difference between each category, such as examination grades (A+, A, B+, etc., clothing size (Extra large, large, medium, small).

Nominal variables are those who can neither be ranked nor logically ordered, such as religion, sex, etc.

A qualitative variable is a characteristic that is not capable of being measured but can be categorized to possess or not to possess some characteristics.

Quantitative Variables

Quantitative variables, also called numeric variables, are those variables that are measured in terms of numbers. A simple example of a quantitative variable is a person’s age.

The age can take on different values because a person can be 20 years old, 35 years old, and so on. Likewise, family size is a quantitative variable, because a family might be comprised of one, two, three members, and so on.

That is, each of these properties or characteristics referred to above varies or differs from one individual to another. Note that these variables are expressed in numbers, for which we call them quantitative or sometimes numeric variables.

A quantitative variable is one for which the resulting observations are numeric and thus possesses a natural ordering or ranking.

Discrete and Continuous Variables

Quantitative variables are again of two types: discrete and continuous.

Variables such as some children in a household or number of defective items in a box are discrete variables since the possible scores are discrete on the scale.

For example, a household could have three or five children, but not 4.52 children.

 

Other variables, such as ‘time required to complete an MCQ test’ and ‘waiting time in a queue in front of a bank counter,’ are examples of a continuous variable.

The time required in the above examples is a continuous variable, which could be, for example, 1.65 minutes, or it could be 1.6584795214 minutes.

Of course, the practicalities of measurement preclude most measured variables from being continuous.

Discrete Variable

Definition 2.6: A discrete variable, restricted to certain values, usually (but not necessarily) consists of whole numbers, such as the family size, number of defective items in a box. They are often the results of enumeration or counting.

A few more examples are;

• The number of accidents in the twelve months.
• The number of mobile cards sold in a store within seven days.
• The number of patients admitted to a hospital over a specified period.
• The number of new branches of a bank opened annually during 2001- 2007.
• The number of weekly visits made by health personnel in the last 12 months.

Continuous Variable

A continuous variable is one that may take on an infinite number of intermediate values along a specified interval. Examples are:

• The sugar level in the human body;
• Blood pressure reading;
• Temperature;
• Height or weight of the human body;
• Rate of bank interest;
• Internal rate of return (IRR),
• Earning ratio (ER);
• Current ratio (CR)

No matter how close two observations might be, if the instrument of measurement is precise enough, a third observation can be found, which will fall between the first two.

A continuous variable generally results from measurement and can assume countless values in the specified range.

Dependent and Independent Variables

In many research settings, there are two specific classes of variables that need to be distinguished from one another, independent variable and dependent variable.

Many research studies are aimed at unrevealing and understanding the causes of underlying phenomena or problems with the ultimate goal of establishing a causal relationship between them.

Look at the following statements:

• Low intake of food causes underweight.
• Smoking enhances the risk of lung cancer.
• Level of education influences job satisfaction.
• Advertisement helps in sales promotion.
• The drug causes the improvement of a health problem.
• Nursing intervention causes more rapid recovery.
• Previous job experiences determine the initial salary.
• Blueberries slow down aging.
• The dividend per share determines share prices.

In each of the above queries, we have two variables: one independent and one dependent. In the first example, ‘low intake of food’ is believed to have caused the ‘problem of underweight.’

It is thus the so-called independent variable. Underweight is the dependent variable because we believe that this ‘problem’ (the problem of underweight) has been caused by ‘the low intake of food’ (the factor).

Similarly, smoking, dividend, and advertisement all are independent variables, and lung cancer, job satisfaction, and sales are dependent variables.

In general, an independent variable is manipulated by the experimenter or researcher, and its effects on the dependent variable are measured.

Independent Variable

The variable that is used to describe or measure the factor that is assumed to cause or at least to influence the problem or outcome is called an independent variable.

The definition implies that the experimenter uses the independent variable to describe or explain the influence or effect of it on the dependent variable.

Variability in the dependent variable is presumed to depend on variability in the independent variable.

Depending on the context, an independent variable is sometimes called a predictor variable, regressor, controlled variable, manipulated variable, explanatory variable, exposure variable (as used in reliability theory), risk factor (as used in medical statistics), feature (as used in machine learning and pattern recognition) or input variable.

The explanatory variable is preferred by some authors over the independent variable when the quantities treated as independent variables may not be statistically independent or independently manipulable by the researcher.

If the independent variable is referred to as an explanatory variable, then the term response variable is preferred by some authors for the dependent variable.

Dependent Variable

The variable that is used to describe or measure the problem or outcome under study is called a dependent variable.

In a causal relationship, the cause is the independent variable, and the effect is the dependent variable. If we hypothesize that smoking causes lung cancer, ‘smoking’ is the independent variable and cancer the dependent variable.

A business researcher may find it useful to include the dividend in determining the share prices. Here dividend is the independent variable, while the share price is the dependent variable.

The dependent variable usually is the variable the researcher is interested in understanding, explaining, or predicting.

In lung cancer research, it is the carcinoma that is of real interest to the researcher, not smoking behavior per se. The independent variable is the presumed cause of, antecedent to, or influence on the dependent variable.

Depending on the context, a dependent variable is sometimes called a response variable, regressand, predicted variable, measured variable, explained variable, experimental variable, responding variable, outcome variable, output variable, or label.

An explained variable is preferred by some authors over the dependent variable when the quantities treated as dependent variables may not be statistically dependent.

If the dependent variable is referred to as an explained variable, then the term predictor variable is preferred by some authors for the independent variable.

Levels of an Independent Variable

If an experimenter compares an experimental treatment with a control treatment, then the independent variable (a type of treatment) has two levels: experimental and control.

If an experiment were to compare five types of diets, then the independent variables (types of diet) would have five levels.

In general, the number of levels of an independent variable is the number of experimental conditions.

Background Variable

In almost every study, we collect information such as age, sex, educational attainment, socioeconomic status, marital status, religion, place of birth, and the like. These variables are referred to as background variables.

These variables are often related to many independent variables so that they influence the problem indirectly. Hence they are called background variables.

If the background variables are important to the study, they should be measured. However, we should try to keep the number of background variables as few as possible in the interest of the economy.

Moderating Variable

In any statement of relationships of variables, it is normally hypothesized that in some way, the independent variable ’causes’ the dependent variable to occur. In simple relationships, all other variables are extraneous and are ignored. In actual study situations, such a simple one-to-one relationship needs to be revised to take other variables into account to better explain the relationship.

This emphasizes the need to consider a second independent variable that is expected to have a significant contributory or contingent effect on the originally stated dependent-independent relationship. Such a variable is termed a moderating variable.

Suppose you are studying the impact of field-based and classroom-based training on the work performance of the health and family planning workers, you consider the type of training as the independent variable.

If you are focusing on the relationship between the age of the trainees and work performance, you might use ‘type of training’ as a moderating variable.

Extraneous Variable

Most studies concern the identification of a single independent variable and the measurement of its effect on the dependent variable.

But still, several variables might conceivably affect our hypothesized independent-dependent variable relationship, thereby distorting the study. These variables are referred to as extraneous variables.

Extraneous variables are not necessarily part of the study. They exert a confounding effect on the dependent-independent relationship and thus need to be eliminated or controlled for.

An example may illustrate the concept of extraneous variables. Suppose we are interested in examining the relationship between the work-status of mothers and breastfeeding duration.

It is not unreasonable in this instance to presume that the level of education of mothers as it influences work-status might have an impact on breastfeeding duration too.

Education is treated here as an extraneous variable. In any attempt to eliminate or control the effect of this variable, we may consider this variable as a confounding variable.

An appropriate way of dealing with confounding variables is to follow the stratification procedure, which involves a separate analysis for the different levels of lies confounding variables.

For this purpose, one can construct two cross­tables: one for illiterate mothers and the other for literate mothers. If we find a similar association between work status and duration of breast­feeding in both the groups of mothers, then we conclude that the educational level of mothers is not a confounding variable.

Intervening Variable

Often an apparent relationship between two variables is caused by a third variable.

For example, variables X and Y may be highly correlated, but only because X causes the third variable, Z, which in turn causes Y. In this case, Z is the intervening variable.

An intervening variable theoretically affects the observed phenomena but cannot be seen, measured, or manipulated directly; its effects can only be inferred from the effects of the independent and moderating variables on the observed phenomena.

In the work-status and breastfeeding relationship, we might view motivation or counseling as the intervening variable.

Thus, motive, job satisfaction, responsibility, behavior, justice are some of the examples of intervening variables.

Suppressor Variable

In many cases, we have good reasons to believe that the variables of interest have a relationship within themselves, but our data fail to establish any such relationship. Some hidden factors may be suppressing the true relationship between the two original variables.

Such a factor is referred to as a suppressor variable because it suppresses the actual relationship between the other two variables.

The suppressor variable suppresses the relationship by being positively correlated with one of the variables in the relationship and negatively correlated with the other. The true relationship between the two variables will reappear when the suppressor variable is controlled for.

Thus, for example, low age may pull education up but income down. In contrast, a high age may pull income up but education down, effectively canceling out the relationship between education and income unless age is controlled for.

Concept

The concept is a name given to a category that organizes observations and ideas by their possession of common features. As Bulmer succinctly puts it, concepts are categories for the organization of ideas and observations (Bulmer, 1984:43).

If a concept is to be employed in quantitative research, it will have to be measured. Once they are measured, concepts can be in the form of independent or dependent variables.

In other words, concepts may explain (explanatory variable) of a certain aspect of the social world, or they may stand for things we want to explain (dependent variable).

 

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How to create your Google AdSense account Step by step

How to create your Google AdSense account

To create your AdSense account, follow these steps:

1. Visit https://www.google.com/adsense/start.
2. Click Sign up now.
3. Enter the URL of the site that you want to show ads on. Learn more about how to enter your Bog website or YouTube URL.

              like

                https://tlopk.blogspot.com/?m=1

 

1. Enter your email address.
2. Choose whether you'd like AdSense to send you customized help and performance suggestions.

We recommend that you choose Yes so we can help you get more out of AdSense. You can change your contact settings later.

3. Click Save and continue.
4. Sign in to your Google Account.
5. Select your country or territory.
6. Review and accept the AdSense Terms and Conditions.
7. Click Create account.

You're now signed in to your new AdSense account.

What to do next

You might notice that some of the options in your new AdSense account are grayed out. That's because there are a few tasks that you need to complete before we can fully activate your account. Learn how to activate your AdSense account.

Creating an AdSense account

How to enter the URL of your site when you create an AdSense account

When you sign up for AdSense we ask you to tell us the URL of your site. To successfully create your AdSense account, the URL that you provide:

• must be a site that you own
• must not have a path (e.g., example.com/path) or subdomain (https://tlopk.blogspot.com/?m=1)must not contain any parameters (//tlopk.blogspot.com/?m=1

For example, let's say you're the owner of example.com. On the AdSense sign-up page, you'd enter example.com in the "URL of your site" field.

Blogger and YouTube URLs

If you enter the URL of your Blogger blog (e.g., example.blogspot.com) or YouTube channel (e.g., youtube.com/channel/example) when you sign up, we'll direct you to continue in your Blogger or YouTube account. These products follow a different account creation process. For more information, see Advertise on your Blogger blog or Set up an AdSense account for payments.

 

Note: The number of accounts that can use the same domain to sign up for AdSense is limited. If there are already ads from a different AdSense account being served on your sign-up domain, you'll need to use a different domain to sign up for your new AdSense account.

How to share a joint AdSense account

You can share your account with other people, such as business partners, employees, friends and family, and give them either of two levels of access. Users with access to your account can help you run your account and manage other users, depending on the level of access you want to give them. You can also remove access at any time.

However, AdSense accounts aren't permitted to have multiple payee names. Currently, the payee name on an AdSense account must be either an individual or a company name, and all account earnings will be paid to that name.

Publishers are allowed to place ad code from more than one AdSense account on a page that complies with our program policies. Alternatively, publishers may choose to rotate ad codes from more than one publisher across a website.

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Globalization And Types of globalization

 

Globalization

Globalization is the process by which ideas, goods and services spread throughout the world.

Globalization is the process by which ideas, goods and services spread throughout the world. In business, the term is often used in an economic context to describe an integrated economy marked by free trade, the free flow of capital and corporate use of foreign labor markets to maximize returns and benefit the common good.

How globalization works

Globalization is driven by the convergence of political, cultural and economic systems that ultimately promote -- and often necessitate -- increased interaction, integration and dependency amongst nations.

The more that disparate regions of the world become intertwined politically, culturally and economically, the more globalized the world becomes. flow of knowledge

These international interactions and dependencies are enabled and accelerated by advances in technology, especially in transportation and telecommunications. In general, money, technology, materials and even people flow more swiftly across national boundaries today than they ever have in the past. The , ideas and cultures is expediated through internet communications.

Types of globalization: Economic, political, cultural 

There are three types of globalization: 

1.     Economic globalization. This type focuses on the unification and integration of international financial markets, as well as multinational corporations that have a significant influence on international markets.

2.     Political globalization. This type deals mainly with policies designed to facilitate international trade and commerce. It also deals with the institutions that implement these policies, which can include national governments as well as international institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization.

3.     Cultural globalization. This type focuses on the social factors that cause cultures to converge -- such as increased ease of communication and transportation, brought about by technology.

It's important to note that all the types influence each other. For example, economic globalization is made possible by certain liberal trade policies that fall under the category of political globalization. Cultural globalization is also affected by policies passed in political globalization and is affected by economic globalization via the imports and exposure a culture has to other cultures through trade.

The unifying thread between the three types of globalization is the advancement of technology. As mentioned previously, technology plays a role in expediting each type.

 

Effects of globalization

The effects of each type of globalization can be felt both locally and globally, and can be observed in interactions at every level of society, from an individual at the micro level to a society at the macro level.

·        The individual level includes the way international influence affects ordinary people within a nation or region

·        The community level includes effects to local or regional organizations, businesses and economies.

·        The institutional level includes effects to multinational corporations, national governments and higher education institutions that have international students. At this level, decisions are made that affect the lower levels.

 While the effects of globalization can be clearly observed, analyzing the net impact of globalization is a complex proposition, as specific results of globalization are often seen as positive by proponents and negative by critics. Many times, a relationship that benefits one entity may end up damaging another, and whether globalization benefits the world at large remains a point of contention. 

Examples of globalization

One relevant example of globalization is the existence of multinational corporations. The term multinational corporation simply refers to a business that conducts operations in more than one country. McDonalds, for instance, is a multinational fast-food corporation with 37,855 restaurants spread over 120 countries and territories as of 2018. With 1.7 million employees, it is the second-largest private employer in the world behind Walmart.

Other examples of multinational corporations include the following:

·        Ford Motor Company, an organization that works with about 1,200 suppliers it identifies as tier 1 around the globe; and

·        Amazon, an organization that uses tens of thousands of suppliers and employs more than 250,000 full-time workers in 175 distribution centers around the world.

Through their expansive presence and influence on social and economic development in the countries that host them, multinational corporations like McDonalds, Amazon and Ford are symbolic of the contradictions of globalization. On the one hand, the multinational corporations can bring jobs, skills and wealth to the region they are in by investing in the local people and resources.

On the other hand, multinational corporations can destroy local businesses, exploit cheap labour in developing countries and threaten cultural diversity. While they do offer benefits to the regions they operate in, they are often unsustainable because the loyalty of the corporation ultimately is to its bottom line and not the culture it has integrated itself into.

Advantages of globalization

Proponents of globalization argue that it can solve fundamental problems with the global economy, such as poverty and unemployment, by promoting a free market that benefits rich and poor nations alike.

Free trade aims to reduce the amount of trade barriers between nations. A trade barrier is any imposed restriction on international trade, including tariffs and subsidies. This consequently promotes economic growth, creates jobs, makes companies more competitive and lowers prices for consumers.

It also theoretically gives poorer countries an opportunity for economic development through exposure to foreign capital and tech, resulting in conditions that foster an improved standard of living for the citizens of that nation.

Disadvantages of globalization

The biggest advantages of globalization are also its biggest disadvantages. While many proponents view globalization as an avenue for solving core economic problems, critics see it as worsening global inequality.

For instance, while some proponents say globalization creates new markets and wealth -- and promotes greater cultural and social integration by eliminating barriers -- critics blame the elimination of barriers for undermining national policies and cultures and destabilizing advanced labor markets in favor of lower-cost wages elsewhere.

Similarly, some proponents point to the rising economies of poor countries benefiting from companies moving operations there to minimize costs. Meanwhile, some critics say such moves could lower living standards in developed countries by eliminating jobs.

While proponents focus on the increased trade benefits and political cooperation that come from a united global economy, critics acknowledge that tightly integrated global economic markets carry greater potential for global recessions.

Advocates of cultural globalization point to improved acknowledgement of human rights on a global scale and shared understanding of our impact on the environment, while critics decry the decimation of unique cultural identity and language, especially in the age of social media.

Advocates view the increased ability to travel and experience new cultures as a selling point of cultural globalization. However, critics point out that increased travel has the potential to increase the risk of pandemics, with the H1N1 (swine flu) outbreak of 2009 and the coronavirus of 2020 serving as two examples of serious diseases that spread to multiple nations very quickly.

History of globalization

Although many consider this process a relatively new phenomenon, globalization has been happening for millennia.

The Roman Empire, for example, spread its economic and governing systems through significant portions of the ancient world for centuries.

Similarly, the trade routes of the Silk Road carried merchants, goods and travelers from China through Central Asia and the Middle East to Europe and represented another wave of globalization.

European countries had significant investments overseas in the decades prior to World War I, prompting some economists to label the prewar period as an earlier golden age of globalization.

The term globalization as it's used today came to prominence in the 1980s, reflecting several technological advancements that expediated international transactions.

Globalization has ebbed and flowed throughout history, with periods of expansion, as well as retrenchment. The 21st century has witnessed both. Global stock markets plummeted after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States, but rebounded in subsequent years.

Overall, however, the early 21st century has seen a dramatic increase in the pace of global integration, driven primarily by rapid advances in technology and telecommunications.

Future of globalization

Technology advances, particularly block chain, mobile communication and banking are fuelling economic globalization.

Nonetheless, the rapid pace of globalization in the early 21st century could be slowed or even reversed by potentially rising levels of protectionism and anti-globalization sentiment happening in several countries.

Aside from nationalism and the growing trend of increasingly conservative economic policy, global trade is under rising threat from climate change, decaying infrastructure, cyberattacks and human rights abuses, all requiring responses from both corporations and governments, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.

(tahirpashton@gmail.com)

 

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Difference between approach, method, procedure, and technique

 

Approach

An approach refers to the general assumptions about what language is and about how learning a language occurs (Richards and Rodgers, 1986). It represents the sum of our philosophy about both the theory of language and the theory of learning. In other words, an approach to language teaching describes:

1.     The nature of language,

2.     How knowledge of a language is acquired,

3.     And the conditions that promote language acquisition.

Method

A method is a practical implementation of an approach. A theory is put into practice at the level a method. It includes decisions about:

§  The particular skills to be taught,

§  The roles of the teacher and the learner in language teaching and learning,

§  The appropriate procedures and techniques,

§  The content to be taught,

§  And the order in which the content will be presented.

It also involves a specific syllabus organization, choices of the materials that will boost learning, and the means to assess learners and evaluate teaching and learning. It is a sort of an organizing plan that relies on the philosophical premises of an approach.

Procedures

Jeremy Harmer (2001) describes ‘procedures’ as “an ordered set of techniques.” They are the step-by-step measures to execute a method. A common procedure in the grammar-translation method, for example, is to start by explaining the grammar rules and exemplifying these rules through sentences that the students then had to translate into their mother tongue. According to Harmer, a procedure is “smaller than a method and larger than a technique.”

Technique

Implementing a procedure necessitates certain practices and behaviors that operate in teaching a language according to a particular method. These practices and behaviors are the techniques that every procedure relies on. Techniques, in this sense, are part and parcel of procedures. They are the actual moment-to-moment classroom steps that lead to a specified outcome. Every procedure is realized through a series of techniques. They could take the form of an exercise or just any activity that you have to do to complete a task. For instance, when using videos, teachers often use a technique called “silent viewing” which consists of playing the video without sound and asking students to figure out what the characters were saying.

Methodological organization of teaching practices

Methodology informs teachers about different ways to organize teaching practices. Harmer (2001), for example, suggests that there are four levels of organization at the level of methodology, namely, approach, method, procedure, and techniques. The following description is inspired by this framework. Many elements of this framework are also discussed by Anthony (1963) and Richards and Rodgers (1986).

Before, describing our framework of the organization of teaching practices, let’s first review briefly Anthony’s and Richards & Rodgers’ models.

The following table shows how approach, method, procedure, and technique have been viewed by Anthony (1963) and Richards & Rodgers (1986):

Antony’s model	Approach		Theory of language Theory of language
	Method		An overall plan for the orderly presentation of language material, no part of which contradicts, and all of which is based upon, the selected approach
	Technique		The actual implementation in the language classroom
Richards and Rodgers model	Method	Approach	Theory of language Theory of language
		Design	Objectives Syllabus type Activity types Learner Roles Teacher Roles Role of materials
		Procedure	Techniques Practices Behaviors

For the sake of the simplification of the above models, approach, method, procedure, and technique are viewed in the following description as flowing in a hierarchical model. First, an approach, which provides theoretical assumptions about language and learning, informs methods. Each method shouldn’t contradict the approach on which it is based. Similarly, procedures are ordered sequences of techniques that have to be aligned with the theoretical assumption a method aspires to put into practice.

 

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