Consider the following experiment. Children are drawn from high-, middle-, and low-income households. All the children are divided into two groups. One group watches Sesame Street on TV every day for a month while the other group watches cartoons. Both groups are then given a test that measures creativity. In this study, ________.

A) the independent variable is what the children watch on TV
B) the independent variable is the children's scores on the creativity test
C) the independent variable is the children's socioeconomic class
D) there is no independent variable; this is a correlational study

The independent variable in this study is what the children watch on TV, as the researchers are manipulating this variable by assigning some children to watch Sesame Street and others to watch cartoons. The socioeconomic class of the children is a demographic variable that is likely to be measured and included as a control variable in the analysis, but it is not being manipulated or varied in the study. The children's scores on the creativity test are the dependent variable, as they are being measured to see if there are differences between the groups based on what TV program they watched. This is not a correlational study, as the researchers are manipulating an independent variable to see if it has an effect on the dependent variable.