Outline Procedure
You must find a procedure or method to measure the dependent variable.
Procedures are developed by:
a. reading articles published by other scientists;
b. talking to other scientists at universities/industries or at scientific meetings;
c. one's own novel and creative ideas.
In the process of outlining a procedure, the following must also be determined:
a. The levels of treatment or the appropriate values to use for the independent variable;
b. the numbers of replications or how many times the experiment will be repeated to ensure that the results are consistent;
c. The control treatments.
A control is a
"treatment" in which the independent variable is either eliminated or set at a
standard value. It has nothing to do with the Controlled Variable(s).
In the coffee bean experiment, if the researcher is hypothesizing that fertilizer affects bean yield, a possible control treatment would be eliminating fertilizer from a coffee bean(s) setup.
This allows the scientist to ascertain that the effect on the dependent variable is in fact due to the independent variable.
Main Page | Introduction and Objectives | Scientific Investigation | Experimental Procedures | Writing Procedures | Mendelian Inheritance | Monohybrid and Dihybrid Exercises | Reference | Miscellaneous | Overview | The Question | The Hypothesis | The Experiment | The Scientific Paper | Variables | Procedures | Predictions | Protocol | Data Evaluations | Conclusions |