Once the researcher had randomly selected his sample of 100 school psychologists, he decided to randomly assign 50 of them to receive, as part of their survey materials, a newspaper article about the improving job market for school psychologists. He assigned the other 50 to receive a newspaper article about the declining job market for school psychologists. Unbeknownst to the participants (until the debriefing at the end of the survey), the articles were fictional. After reading the articles, the participants responded to questions about their attitudes toward their careers. The researcher wondered whether
attitudes could be affected by external sources.
a. What is the independent variable in this experiment, and what are its levels?
b. What is the dependent variable in this experiment?
c. Write a null hypothesis and a research hypothesis for this study.