Extraneous Variables are 

undesirable variables that influence the relationship between the variables

that an experimenter is examining. Another way to think of this, is that these are variables the influence
the outcome of an experiment, though they are not the variables that are actually of interest. These
variables are undesirable because they add error to an experiment. A major goal in research design is to
decrease or control the influence of extraneous variables as much as possible.

Methods to Control Extraneous Variables

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Extraneous variables are a challenge to both the internal and external validity of the experiment. Against
the willingness of the research and the researcher, they tend to have an impact on the dependant
variable and affect the outcome of the experiment. In the process of research, there is a need to control
the extraneous variables as they add an alternative explanation of the results.

Largely, there are four approaches by which the effect of the extraneous variables can be controlled.

1) Randomization: In this approach, treatments are randomly assigned to the experimental groups. It is
assumed that the extraneous factors are present equally in all the groups. This technique is only
workable when the sample size is very large.

2)Matching: Another important technique is to match the different groups of confounding variables.

Different confounding variables like gender, age, income etc. could be distributed equally amongst the
group. It sometimes does become difficult to extend matching within all the groups and another
drawback of the same is that, sometime the matched characteristics may be irrelevant to the dependant
variable.

3)The use experimental designs:  In certain studies, the experimental designs may play a crucial role in
reducing or completely removing the role and impact of the extraneous variables.

4)Statistical Control:  There may be situations, when all the above mentioned methods to control the
extraneous variables do not show any significant outcome. It brings the entire research into question as
then causal inferences are difficult to make. Another method that may work to bring down the effect of
extraneous variables is the method of statistical control.  Among the various statistical tools and
techniques, Analysis of Covariance ( ANOVA) helps in reducing the impact of the extraneous factors on
the study.

These four methods, in their own way, can be used in the research, collectively or exclusively to
eliminate the relationship impact discussed above. It is dependent upon the expertise of the researcher
to understand and administer these methods in a  way that the best possible results can be obtained.

One type of extraneous variable is called a confounding variable. Confounding variables directly affect

how the independent variable acts on the dependent variable. It can muddle your results, leading you to
think that there is cause and effect when in fact there is not. In the above example, a confounding
variable could be introduced if the researcher gave the text book to students in a low income school,
and assigned online learning to students in a higher income school. As students in higher income schools
typically take more challenging coursework than students in lower income schools, pre-knowledge
becomes a confounding extraneous variable.

Extraneous variables should be controlled if possible. One way to control extraneous variables is
with random sampling. Random sampling does not eliminate any extraneous variable, it only ensures it
is equal between all groups. If random sampling isn’t used, the effect that an extraneous variable can
have on the study results become a lot more of a concern.

For example 1 :
For example, let’s say that an educational psychologist has developed a new learning strategy and is
interested in examining the effectiveness of this strategy. The experimenter randomly assigns students
to two groups. All of the students study text materials on a biology topic for thirty minutes. One group
uses the new strategy and the other uses a strategy of their choice. Then all students complete a test
over the materials. One obvious confounding variable in this case would be pre-knowledge of the
biology topic that was studied. This variable will most likely influence student scores, regardless of which
strategy they use. Because of this extraneous variable (and surely others) there will be some spread
within each of the groups. It would be better, of course, if all students came in with the exact same pre-
knowledge. However, the experimenter has taken an important step to greatly increase the chances
that, at least, the extraneous variable will add error variance equivalently between the two groups. That
is, the experimenter randomly assigned students to the two groups.

Example :2
Does smoking cause heart disease? Since the objective is to discover a potential causal relationship, it is
important to control for any possible extraneous variables, such as diet, number of cigarettes, etc.
However, as many studies have shown, there are other factors (or extraneous variables) that can affect
the dependent variable (heart disease), that cannot be controlled, like genetics.

Example :3
Are you studying the effects of pressure injury education among CNA's and RNS in a nursing care facility?
Some of your potential extraneous variables may be previous knowledge, experience, adequate
assessment skills, the patient's skin color, etc.

Example :4
Are you studying the effects of skin-to-skin contact immediately after birth on breastfeeding duration?
Some of your potential extraneous variables may be culture, breastfeeding education, mother's
readiness, etc.

Example :5
For example, if you are testing the effect of a drug on cold symptoms, some of the obvious extraneous
variables are severity of cold, age, sex, other treatments in use, length of time since onset; and there are
others. Ideally you control these things, that is you choose them.

When that’s impractical, as it is for most of these variables, you try to match your sample. So you put
people together in pairs that match as closely as possible on the important extraneous variables, then
choose at random which one goes in the control group and which one goes in the treatment group.

When that’s impractical because you have too many extraneous variables for your number of subjects,
you at least try to make sure the treatment and control groups match on average values of the
extraneous variables.

The last resort is usually to adjust for them. That requires some theory or prior work that establishes the
effect of the variables, and allows you to measure how your results deviate from what was expected
given the extraneous variables.

Also, remember that extraneous variables are in the mind of the investigator. You might want to know if
a drug relieves cold symptoms or hastens recovery on average. But it might be really interesting to know
that, say, it helps in children but hurts in adults; or relieves symptoms but keeps the patients sick longer.

Extraneous Variable in a Realtionship :

Extraneous variables are essentially surprises or something that causes an unanticipated change from an
apparent stable relationship.

For instance….

Party A is married but unexpectedly meets, falls in love and wants to be with Party B.

Party A thinks he will be fine setting up Party B with Party C but Party A suddenly realizes he also has
feelings for Party B and needs to figure out how to get Party C out of the way.