Читать книгу Child Psychology - Jean-Pascal Assailly - Страница 33

A confounding factor is one that explains the causal relationship that we assume at first glance between two variables. For example, when we take 100 children of divorced parents and 100 children of married parents, we generally find more academic failure in the first group. However, academic failure is closely linked to the child’s sociocultural background and divorce is more frequent in disadvantaged environments, so sociocultural background is a confounding factor in the link between divorce and academic failure.

Thus, if we control this confounding factor, if we compare 100 children of divorced parents from privileged backgrounds and 100 children of married parents from privileged backgrounds, say, we no longer observe differences between the two groups with respect to academic failure.