Assessing And Improving Reliability Flashcards
Reliability is a measure of?
Consistency
How can you test if a tool is reliable
Test retest method
(Same group of people asked to undertake the research measure e.g. questionnaire, on different occasions)
(Test retest method) what happens after the measure has been completed on 2 separate occasions
Two scores are then correlated
What’s a good correlation
+0.8
(Perfect is 1)
What is a significant correlation an indication of
Good reliability
What’s an issue with the re-test method
If you test on two occasions that are too far apart of course ur gonna get diff results that make it unreliable?
E.g. testing for depression a year apart - sb might recover by then
What’s inter obser reliability/ inter rater
The extent to which two or more observers record and observe behaviour in a consistent manner
How to improve the reliability of questionnaires
- it’s possible to identify which questions that are having the biggest impact upon the reliability and then adjust them as necessary e.g. rewriting them so that they’re in a manner that reduces the potential for them to be incorrectly interpreted
How could we improve the reliability of interviews
- ensure the same interviewer conducts everything (reduces researcher bias) so the questions are asked the same way + some researchers might do leading questions and others won’t so keep it the same for everyone
- change the interview from unstructured to structured to limit researcher bias
How to improve the reliability of experiments
- follow standardised procedures
- take more control over extraneous variables (make em confounding)
How to improve the reliability of observations
- observations can lack objectivity as they rely on the observer right
So we have to improve reliability would be to operationalise the behavioural categories, so they’re clear and there’s no overlap and no need for personal interpretation
