Read the following summary of published research and answer the questions found at the end.

1. Article Summary: According to the authors of this study, a commonly held stereotype is that women are more concerned with (and attentive to) dates of past events than are men. This stereotype may imply that in general women are better than men at reconstructing the dates of past events. To test this implication, the results of four studies investigating memory for past events were analyzed for gender differences. In all the studies subjects were asked to keep a diary for about 3 months.They were instructed to write down each day a short description of one unique personal event. At the end of the 3-month period, subjects' memory of the events and their ability to date the events was assessed. The list of personal events was read aloud to subjects in a random order. Each subject indicated on a 7-point scale how well the event was remembered (1=not at all to 7=perfectly. For events that were remembered, the subject attempted to identify the exact date and day of the week on which the event occurred. Memory for dates was measured using the median error made in estimating the dates for each subject. The means of these error scores for males and females were compared in each of the four studies. In three studies, female mean errors were less than male mean errors. Two of these differences were statistically significant.For the fourth comparison there was a slight and nonsignificant difference in favor of the males.Overall the investigators viewed the data as suggesting that women are slightly better at reconstructing dates than are men. It is not clear whether this finding occurred because women are better able than men to organize temporal events or because of some artifact of the record keeping process (e.g., women may have written more detailed, and hence more memorable, descriptions in their diaries).

a. What are the independent and dependent variables in this study? Note: There is one independent (suspected cause) and 2 dependent (suspected effect) variables.

b. Identify the specific levels of the independent variable. Were the levels of the independent variable manipulated or selected?