If you turn a covariate into a outcome variable what would happen to the study? I have a question; I have mood as a covariate in one of my projects. It's an important covariate. But I had to remove covariates due to insufficient numbers, so I proposed turning mood into an outcome measure, and I was told that that would change the study completely. Can someone explain how and why?
The idea is IV is the testing condition, let's say condition a( Desktop) vs. condition b( VR) vs condition c( control), and were use mood as one covariate and memory recall as a DV.  In this scenario, if I added the mood as a DV - would it not translate to observing the impact of each condition on Mood and memory?

One study proposes to use $p$ features, including mood, to predict memory. Another study proposes to use $p-1$ features, excluding mood, to predict mood and memory.
These are different questions being answered in different ways. Neither question is a bad question to ask, but they’re totally different.
