The next kind of scientific variables on the list
The next kind of scientific variables on the list, social instructional ones fall into three key categories as stated above. Artifactual cultural variables can be defined as the materialistic elements of people’s culture, such as print forms of media. While created to represent objective opinions and provide honest descriptions of the world political and economical situation, media in each country bears distinct feature that allow locating its origin almost immediately. For instance, the political preferences and prejudices of the population of a particular country can define the specifics of the local media, which, in its turn, becomes an artifactual cultural variable.
Customary cultural variables, in their turn, are related to non-materialistic elements of a particular culture; to be more exact, these are “values and practices†(Ellis, Harley & Walsh, 2010, p. 29), which are traditionally accepted in a particular society. To provide an example of the given type of variables, one should consider present-day industries. The theories and practical instructions on using a particular tool, from a hammer to a grain harvester combine, can be seen as the practices that people have mastered and, thus, perfect and pass them on to other generations to improve these theories ever since.
The variable denoted as behavior and personality by Ellis, Harley and Walsh (Ellis, Harley & Walsh, 2010, p. 29) can be exemplified by considering the behavioral patterns that people may take in specific setting. For example, in a team of people that can be defined as business partners, the members can be assigned with such roles as the leader, the leader’s assistant, the person dealing with the financial aspects of the venture, etc.
Finally, the cognitive variable must be mentioned as an important part of the set of scientific variables. According to what Ellis, Harley and Walsh say, cognitive variables are represented by the palette of emotions that people can feel. Therefore, the change in emotions of a particular person during the day can be considered an example of a cognitive variable.
