5.17 A sample of 548 ethnically diverse students from Massachusetts were followed over a 19-month period from 1995 and 1997 in a study of the relationship between TV viewing and eating habits (Pediatrics

[2003]: 1321–1326). For each additional hour of television viewed per day, the number of fruit and vegetable servings per day was found to decrease on average by 0.14 serving.

a. For this study, what is the dependent variable?

What is the independent variable?

b. Would the least-squares line for predicting number of servings of fruits and vegetables using number of hours spent watching TV as a predictor have a positive or negative slope? Explain.