If happiness is your dependent variable, it means that you are measuring your subject group’s happiness based on the alteration of a different variable. For instance, you might be looking at the effects of looking at silly cat pictures on happiness, or whether divorcees report more or less happiness than married people.
If happiness were to be your independent variable, it would mean that you are looking at the effect of happiness on...
If happiness is your dependent variable, it means that you are measuring your subject group’s happiness based on the alteration of a different variable. For instance, you might be looking at the effects of looking at silly cat pictures on happiness, or whether divorcees report more or less happiness than married people.
If happiness were to be your independent variable, it would mean that you are looking at the effect of happiness on some other measurable attribute--for example, the effect of happiness on creative productivity among artists, or the effect of happiness on lifespan among women.
If happiness is your dependent variable you are measuring the effect of another variable on happiness, while if happiness is your independent variable, you are measuring happiness’s effect on something else.
An important consideration is that whether happiness is your independent or dependent variable, you will need to find some way of measuring happiness, a difficult state to quantify. You could consider using some type of self-reported survey or interview to measure happiness, or using the subjective reports of others, or even looking at the brain states of your subjects!
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