As Dr. Comeskey was giving a lecture to his medieval history class, one of his students asked which Italian family was the most ruthless. Although he believes that the Borgias were, he plans an empirical study. To keep his study manageable, he compares the average number of people the Borgias killed to the average number of people the Medicis killed. What is the dependent variable at the operational level?

Possible answers: the Borigas and the Medicis

number of people the family members killed

medieval Italian families

ruthlessness