What are the independent and dependent variables for this, Also the way they're operationalised.
Judy, an educational psychologist, was interested in studying the effects of positive reinforcement on students’ mathematics performance at school. Judy works at Mountain Hills Secondary College, a coeducational secondary school. There are 100 Year 8 students at the school: 60 females and 40 males. The Year 8 students are aged between 12.5 and 14.5 years old.
Judy selected two of the Year 8 mathematics classes (Class A and Class B) to participate in the study. Class A contained 20 students: 12 females and 8 males. Class B contained 23 students: 14 females and 9 males. Informed consent was obtained from the students.
Prior to the experiment, each participant sat a numeracy test of 40 questions (Numeracy Test 1) administered by their mathematics teacher. The teachers then gave the results of the test to Judy.
The teacher of Class A was instructed to continue teaching the students mathematics as she normally would. The teacher of Class B was instructed to provide students with praise whenever they got a question right. These students were also given stickers when they completed a worksheet and were rewarded with 15 minutes of free time for every five worksheets they completed.
At the end of four weeks, the mathematics teachers administered a second numeracy test of 40 questions (Numeracy Test 2) and sent the participants’ results to Judy. The difference in the mean number of the number of questions that were correct was calculated. The results are presented in the table below.