What is the nature of your variable of interest?
– OR –
More Information (if you need help deciding)
Your variable of interest in the variable that you want to test on. So if I want to see whether men are significantly taller than women on average, I would select a random group of men and women as my test subjects, and my variable of interest would be height.
Continuous: A continuous variable is a variable that can reasonably take on any value within a range. Good examples of continuous variables include height, weight, exam scores, income, salary, etc.
Proportional/Categorical: A categorical variable is a variable that contains categories without a natural order. Examples of categorical variables are eye color, city of residence, type of dog, etc. Proportional variables are most often derived from categorical variables, for instance: the number of people that converted on two different versions of your website (10% vs 15%), percentages, the number of people who voted vs people who did not vote, the proportion of plants that died vs survived an experimental treatment, etc.