Thoughts

What are your thoughts?

In health research the independent variables are what we expect will influence dependent variables. A dependent variable is what happens as a result of the independent variable. For example, if we want to explore whether high concentrations of vehicle exhaust impact incidence of asthma in children, vehicle exhaust is the independent variable while asthma is the dependent variable. According to Streeter et al. (2017), the extraneous or confounding variable, or confounder, affects the relationship between the independent and dependent variables. Thus, a confounding variable in the example of car exhaust and asthma would be a differential exposure to other factors that increase respiratory issues, like cigarette smoke or particulates from factories.