A researcher maintains that a person's self-esteem level is largely inherited from his or her parents. From this, she derives the prediction that children with low self-esteem probably come from homes where one or both parents have low self-esteem. In this case, the formal prediction is the

A) theory.
B) hypothesis.
C) independent variable.
D) dependent variable.

The formal prediction derived from the researcher's theory is a hypothesis, which is an educated guess or tentative explanation that can be tested through research. In this case, the hypothesis is that children with low self-esteem probably come from homes where one or both parents have low self-esteem. The theory is the researcher's overall explanation for the relationship between self-esteem and parental influence. The independent variable would be the variable that is manipulated or controlled in the study, and the dependent variable would be the variable that is measured or observed as a result of the manipulation. However, neither of these terms is applicable to the formal prediction itself.