Final answer:
You are studying the effects of experimental manipulation in a controlled experiment when you focus on behavior changes immediately following a change in the level of an independent variable.
Step-by-step explanation:
If you focus on how behavior changes immediately following a change in the level of an independent variable, you are studying the effects of an experimental manipulation in a controlled experiment. In such experiments, the researcher typically manipulates the independent variable to observe its effect on the dependent variable. This process allows for a clear understanding of the causal relationship between the two.
To ensure the accuracy of the experiment, the researcher isolates the explanatory variable (the independent variable) to determine its direct effects. This is achieved by randomly assigning participants to different treatment groups, thus controlling for lurking variables. The dependent variable is what the researcher measures to see the effect of the independent variable—like how technology use in the classroom affects learning.
An ideal experimental design will have one crucial difference between the experimental group and the control group: the level of exposure to the experimental treatment. By comparing these groups, researchers can statistically analyze data to determine if there are significant changes in the dependent variable, which are attributed to the manipulation of the independent variable.