You are doing an experiment to test whether exercise improves self-control in children. Half of the children will jump rope for five minutes before being left alone in a room with a bowl of candy. The other half of the children will color for five minutes before being left alone in the room with the candy. You plan to measure how long it takes for each child to begin eating the candy as well as how much candy the children consume. Which statement about your research is true?
a. Your dependent variable has two operational definitions.b. Your independent variable has two operational definitions.c. Your study does not have a control group.d. Your study has the advantage of taking place in a real-world setting.

In an experiment there are some types of variables that help the researcher to evaluate all hypotheses of his research. These variables are called dependent and independent. The independent variable is the one that represents the research element that can be measured and manipulated by the researcher. In the case of the above research, this variable is the type of activity the children were doing. On the other hand, the dependent variable is one that depends on the manipulation of the independent variable to present a response that can be evaluated by the researcher.

In the case of research, shown in the question above, the dependent variables will be the amount of time it will take a child to eat sweets and the amount of sweets eaten. For this reason, we can conclude that in this experiment the dependent variable has two operational definitions.