One group of 15 students studies the text of a story about gang violence while listening to rap music. A second group of 10 students studies the same story while listening to classical music. The experimenter then asks both groups to write down any details they can remember from the story. In this research design, the independent variable MOST likely is the:

A size of the group.

B. amount of story detail remembered.

C. type of story.

D. type of music listened

d) type of music listened

Explanation:

When researchers are conducting an experiment, they work with two main variables: the independent variable and the dependent variable.

The independent variable refers to the variable that can be controlled in the experiment to test how this variable has an effect on the dependent variable.

The dependent variable is the variable that is being measured and that the researchers have no real control of. This variable will be affected by the manipulation of the independent variable.

In this example, two different groups of students study the text of a story about gang violence. One of them studies while listening to rap music while the other group studies while listening to classical music. Then they both need to write down the details they remember. The variable that is being controlled is the type of music, since the researchers are manipulating this music and see how the different types of music affect the amount of details remembered. Therefore, the most likely independent variable is the type of music listened.