BCR Tutorial Week 7 (Lecture Notes 3, 4)

FIC0154 Basic Comm Research

Reference materials: Lecture notes 3, 4 and relevant book chapters

Question 1

Define Independent and Dependent Variables.

Independent variables:

~ Variable that you have the power to control what you can choose and manipulate.

~ Manipulated variable : varied by the researcher.

~ Cause of the dependent variables : affects the dependent variables to change.

~ Example: To investigate the effect of advertising on brand loyalty. The types of the advertisement would be the independent variable. You can directly manipulate the types of the advertisement in your research and get the different results.

Dependent variables:

~ Variable that you measured in the research and show what is affected during the research.

~ Variable that the researcher want to explain, observe and measure.

~ Responding variableà changed by the independent variable.

~ Depends on the independent variableà pressured by the results of independent variable.

~ Example: To investigate the effect of advertising on brand loyalty. The brand loyalty of would be the dependent variable. It will able to change by the independent variable which is the types of advertisement.

Provide examples of topics and identify the dependent and independent variables of the topics.

1) To investigate what types of TV program have more advertising support.

Independent variable: types of TV program

Dependent variable: level of advertising support

2) To investigate how the languages affect the communication skills. 

Independent variable: types of languages

Dependent variable: levels of communication skills

3) To investigate the bias level of newspaper towards the government.

Independent variable: types of newspaper
Dependent variable: bias level of newspaper

4) To investigate would Facebook addiction affect the students’ concentration in class?

Independent variable: level of addiction to facebook

Dependent variable: level of students’ concentration in class

Question 2

An operational definition specifies the procedures to be followed to experience or measure a concept/variable. There is no single foolproof method to operationally defining a variable. The researcher must decide which method is the best suited for the research problem at hand.

Provide your own operational definition for each of following variables. In other words, if your research involves the following variables, how would you SPECIFIALLY define / observe / measure them?

E.g.

i) Experienced female drivers

Answer: Operational definition of the variable ‘experienced female drivers’ is defined as ‘females between age 25-55 who hold a valid Malaysian driving license for 5 years and above’.

ii) Attitude towards illegal movie downloading from the internet

Answer: Operational definition of the variable ‘attitude towards illegal movie downloading from the internet’ is measured by ‘how many times a person downloads movies from internet sites without payment in a month. 0 times/month = totally against illegal downloading; 1-2 times month = somewhat supportive of illegal downloading; 3-5 times/month = very supportive of illegal downloading; more than 5 times a month = fanatic supporter of illegal downloading.

Prime-time television programs

The operational definition of the variable ‘prime-time television programs’ is defined as the types of TV programs show during the prime time which is  8-10 p.m. on all Malaysia channels / between 7-10 p.m. in NTV7.

          

Students’ attitude in lectures

The operational definition of the variable ‘students’ attitude in lectures’ is measured by the body language of the student (eye contact, sitting exposure or writing note during the lectures) / number of pages for the notes.

Addicted smart phone users

The operational definition of the variable ‘addicted smart phone users’ is defined as teenagers with the age between 15-20 years old that using the smart phone more than 8 hours per day / number of apps in the phone. For example: 1- 49 apps in the smart phone = not addicted to the smart phone; more than 50 apps in the smart phone = addicted to the smart phone.

POSTED BY: YUE PEK CHEE (0310197)