Question

Discuss what are some of the possible "lurking variables" that may exist from the below scenario.

A correlation was found between high blood pressure and cancer rates. (People with high blood pressure were more likely to develop cancer than people with low blood pressure.) It was concluded that high blood pressure causes cancer.

Answer 1

A lurking variable is unknown variable that can falsely identify a strong relationship between variables or it can hide the true relationship between variables .

This type of variable is not measured in study, but have effect on both dependent and independent variable.

in other words this type of variable distorts the apparent relationship between two variables, X and Y.

Lurking variables are type of extraneous variable. They are neither the explanatory nor response variable ,but a third variable that lurks beneath the surface, making the relationship between the variables .

For example,

According to given statement , research scientist studies the relationship between cancer rates and person's blood pressure. And the result was that high blood pressure causes cancer.

In this case Lurking variables that also affect blood pressure are whether a person smokes and stress levels .

If person smokes then this will be a lurking variable , because it affect our result of experiment.

Similarly if person on which experiment is conducted has high stress level ,then it will affect his blood pressure ,and finally our result will not be the pure and unbiased relation between blood pressure and cancer rates , because here lurking variable stress level is taken into account and has a significant affect on result of experiment .

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