A school counselor wants to determine if the efficacy of the two new recommended counseling methods would be different in reducing students' anxiety level before taking tests from the traditional one that she has been using. She uses three existing classes of students for her study with each class using one different counseling method. Before she starts her interventions, she administers a same test of anxiety level to all the three classes. She then implements the new and traditional counseling methods in three classes for about two weeks. She conducts a test of anxiety level again.

Which one is NOT true regarding the pre-test score in this quasi experimental design?

A Dependent variable

B Confounding or extraneous variable

C Independent variable

D Covariate