Teresa wants to know if people who post more messages about themselves on social media are more selfish than people who do not.

a. She decides to count the number of Facebook status updates that her subjects post in a week that include the word “I.” She also administers a psychological test that her professor told her measures selfishness. By using these methods of measuring her variables, what step of the research is she engaging in?

b. Teresa believes that selfishness also causes people to post more self centered messages on social media. Which variable is the independent variable in her study? Which variable is the dependent variable? Why?

c. Is this a correlational design or an experimental design?