A researcher is interested in the effects of exercise and sunlight on mental health. Participants who had a known history of mild depression were selected. Forty-eight females were randomly assigned to either 30 minutes of indoor exercise daily, 30 minutes of outdoor walking daily, or no exercise for a 6-week period. The 60 males were also randomly assigned to either 30 minutes of indoor exercise daily, 30 minutes of outdoor walking daily, or no exercise for a 6-week period. During that time each person recorded how they were feeling in the morning, just after lunch, and just before bed. Responders chose one of the following in the cell-phone app. Feeling positive, feeling neutral, feeling sad.

Is the response variable qualitative or quantitative?

Question

A researcher is interested in the effects of exercise and sunlight on mental health. Participants who had a known history of mild depression were selected. Forty-eight females were randomly assigned to either 30 minutes of indoor exercise daily, 30 minutes of outdoor walking daily, or no exercise for a 6-week period. The 60 males were also randomly assigned to either 30 minutes of indoor exercise daily, 30 minutes of outdoor walking daily, or no exercise for a 6-week period. During that time each person recorded how they were feeling in the morning, just after lunch, and just before bed. Responders chose one of the following in the cell-phone app. Feeling positive, feeling neutral, feeling sad.

Is the response variable qualitative or quantitative?

BlackTom AI · Accepted Answer

The responses—"feeling positive," "feeling neutral," and "feeling sad"—are categorical labels rather than numeric measurements, so the response variable is qualitative (categorical).

1. Relevant knowledge points and concepts
- Qualitative (categorical) variables record labels or categories (colors, types, feelings) and are summarized by counts or proportions.
- Quantitative (numerical) variables record numeric measurements (height, time, score) and support arithmetic operations (mean, standard deviation).
- Categorical variables can be nominal (no inherent order) or ordinal (with a meaningful order). Mood words can be considered ordinal (positive > neutral > sad), but they remain qualitative.

2. Step-by-step reasoning
- Inspect the possible responses: "feeling positive," "feeling neutral," "feeling sad."
- These responses are words/labels describing mental state; they do not provide numeric measurements.
- Therefore the variable records categories into which each observation falls, matching the definition of a qualitative variable.

3. Calculations and intermediate steps
- No numeric calculation is required to classify the variable. If one summarizes the data, one would compute frequencies or percentages for each category (e.g., count how many times "positive" was selected), not arithmetic summaries like means of raw values.

4. Why the correct answer is correct
- Because the response takes one of a small set of named categories rather than producing a numeric value, it is a categorical (qualitative) variable. Analysis would use contingency tables, chi-square tests, or ordinal methods rather than t-tests of raw measurements.

5. Why the other option is incorrect
- "Quantitative (numerical)" is incorrect because the responses are not numbers and do not represent measurements on a numeric scale. Even if one assigned numbers to categories (e.g., 2 = positive, 1 = neutral, 0 = sad), that coding does not change the underlying qualitative nature of the data.

6. Conclusion
- The response variable is qualitative (categorical), which matches the provided answer: Qualitative (categorical).

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