Can you help me determine the Independent and Dependent variable?

Basically the research question is: does the socio-economic backgrounds of football players vs. golf players affect their overall college experience?



I think the Independent Variable is the sport played (either football or golf) and the Dependent Variable is their socio-economic status/ overall college experience



Am I wrong..?Can you help me determine the Independent and Dependent variable?
This is a tricky one. Your dependent variable would most likely be "socioeconomic standing of sports players." You would then have to divide this into categories on your x-axis. You would most likely have to take 2 or 3 different socioeconomic standing and the sport for each bar of the graph (i.e. rich golf players, rich football players, poor golf players, poor football players or whatever). Then your independent variable, or y-axis would be the college experience depending on both of those factors.



This is because the independent variable is dependent on the dependent variable. You are "selecting" the people in your study based on the dependent variable. The independent variable is what you find out because of the dependent variable.
No, I think you're correct. ;)Can you help me determine the Independent and Dependent variable?
I think that a student's college experience is dependent on the socio-economic backgrounds of the students. Don't really see how the sport they play is relevant because people from all socio-economic backgrounds play football and golf (personally I like hockey and wouldn't be caught with a golf club anywhere near me.) So my point is who cares what sport they play ... unless you're referring to scholarships and stuff then I agree with what you suggested.



Otherwise I would make the socio-economic background of the students the independent variable and the overall college experience as the dependent variable ... but I'm not sure how that will be measured.Can you help me determine the Independent and Dependent variable?
The independent variable is the variable which is manipulated on an experiment to see its effect on the dependent variable. On your research question, it would be the the socio-economic backgrounds which would affect the college experiences. And i would like to believe this would be a comparative study between football and golf players, which also tries to determine how their respective sports would affect their overall college experience.



Thus,

Independent Variable - socio-economic backgrounds and sport played

Dependent Variable - overall college experience