  Repeat scans by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) of a 278 square degree
stripe along the Celestial equator have yielded an average of over 10
observations each for nearly 8,000 spectroscopically confirmed quasars. Over
2500 of these quasars are in the redshift range such that the CIV emission line
is visible in the SDSS spectrum. Utilising the width of these CIV lines and the
luminosity of the nearby continuum, we estimate black hole masses for these
objects. In an effort to isolate the effects of black hole mass and luminosity
on the photometric variability of our dataset, we create several subsamples by
binning in these two physical parameters. By comparing the ensemble structure
functions of the quasars in these bins, we are able to reproduce the well-known
anticorrelation between luminosity and variability, now showing that this
anticorrelation is independent of the black hole mass. In addition, we find a
correlation between variability and the mass of the central black hole. By
combining these two relations, we identify the Eddington ratio as a possible
driver of quasar variability, most likely due to differences in accretion
efficiency.
