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 |