The Research Variable

B. The Research Variable

According to Kerlinger in Sugiyono (2011: 61), “Variable is constructs or characteristic that wil l be studied”. Based on this expert’s statement, the researcher concludes that the research variable is an attribute or characteristic of people, object or activity that has certain variety that has been defined by the researcher to be studied and then taking its conclusion. In doing this research, the variables of the research are:

1. Independent variable (X) is Elkonin Boxes Strategy.

2. Dependent variable (Y) is the students’ ability in reading skill at the seventh grade of SMP Negeri 3 Idanogawo According to L.R. Gay and Peter Airasian (2000:622), “Control variable is a non manipulated variable, usually a physical or mental characteristic of the participant. Furthermore, they explains that control refers to the researcher effort to remove the influence of any extraneous variable (other than independent variable is

self) that might affect the scores on the dependent variable. In other words, the researcher wants the groups to be as similar as possible, so the only major difference between them is the treatment variables manipulated by the researcher. It means that the researcher only do the treatment to the experimental group while in control group the researcher will apply conventional strategy as the comparison to know the effect of Elkonin Boxes Strategy in teaching reading skill. The difference between experimental group and control group is the treatment application while the teacher, material, the amount of teaching time, ability is same.

The way to determine the control group is by using randomizations method. According to L.R. Gay and Peter Airasian (2000:623), “Randomizations is the best single way to simultaneously control for many extraneous variable”. In experimental

research, there should be two classes, the personalize class and the traditional class, and each of the two classes could be subdivided to obtain similar numbers of the students’ quantity. In a research design both variables may be manipulated or one group may be a manipulated variable and the other is a non manipulated variable. The non manipulated variable is often offered to as control variable.

According to L.R. Gay and Peter Airasian (2000:354), “There are some procedures of control variable, they are:

1) Matching Matching is another control technique. Arrange participation in one group, the

researcher finds a participant in the other group with the same of very similar score on the control variable. If a participant in either group does not match, the

participants will eliminate from the study. In this case, the control group must have the near score with the other groups.

2) Comparing homogeneous group or subgroups Another way to control extraneous variable is to compare groups that are

homogeneous with respect to the extraneous. To know the homogeneity is by doing the pretest both of the group then analyze them by using statistic technique in the form of homogeneity test.

3) Analyses of covariance An analysis of covariance is used to adjust initial group differences on variable

used in causal-comparative and experimental research studies. To analyze them, the researcher will do the pre-test, if the score result in experimental group is higher than the control group, this research is covariance.