I have to name the two variables in the following hypothesis...

 

Homeless women are subjected to more spousal abuse that are housed women.

 

I initially thought it was homeless women and spousal abuse...However, now I'm thinking the 2 variables are homeless women and housed women because thats the characteristic on which the two variables differ...

 

Can someone point me in the right direction?

Yeah, your second ponder is correct. The homeless women is the active independent variable and the housed women is the dependent variable. Hope this helps.

http://www.sahs.utmb.edu/pellinore/intro_to_research/wad/vars_hyp.htm Check this link out it tells you all about it.

Homeless women are subjected to more spousal abuse that are housed women.

Translating word problems into algebra can take some practice. Try,

 

The spousal abuse suffered by homeless women is greater than the spousal abuse suffered by housed women.

So, the variables are the abuse (A) with subscripts indicating whether the women live on the street (S) or in domiciles (D). Thus,

 

A_S > A_D