What is a Confounding Variable?
Its a variable that has an unintentional effect on the dependent variable. So if an experiment examines whether violence on TV (independent variable) causes aggressive behaviour in children (dependent variable) and we find that viloent TV does correlate with aggression in children, but find in the same experiment that style of parenting also correlates with aggression, then parenting style would be a confounding variable, because we then couldnt be sure if it was the violent TV or parenting style that causes the aggressive behaviour. So we need to control for counfounding variables so that we can be sure that its the independent variable, and nothing else, thats having an effect upon the dependent variable. hope this is easy for you to understand.
