It may or may not be: it depends on the study.
In a study of how people intend to vote in an election, the political affiliation would be an independent variable - although probably very highly correlated with the voting intention.
On the other hand in the study of the political affiliation of the people who voted in favour of (or against) a particular person, it will be a dependent variable.
Chat with our AI personalities
independent
a independent variable is a variable changed in a science experiment,and a dependent variable is the result according to the cause of the change in the independent variable.
The dependent variable depends on the independent variable for its values as for example in the straight line equation: y = 2x+1 It is y that is the dependent variable and x the independent variable.
independent variable
Typically the horizontal axis represents the independent variable.