Chapter 8: Measurement in Quantitative and Qualitative Inquiry Flashcards
A measurement error that occurs when the information we collect consistently reflects a false picture of the concept we seek to measure.
systematic error
A distortion in measurement based on personal preferences or beliefs.
bias
The tendency to agree or disagree with all statements regardless of their content.
acquiescent response set
The tendency of people to say or do things that will make them or their reference group look good.
social desirability bias
A measurement error that has no consistent pattern of effects.
random error
The degree of consistency in measurement (impeded by random error).
reliability
The degree of agreement or consistency between or among observers or raters.
inter-observer reliability or inter-rater reliability
A method for assessing a measure’s consistency or stability.
test–retest reliability
The degree to which scores among scale items, or scores among subsets of items, correlate with each other.
internal consistency reliability
The average of the correlations between the scores of all possible subsets of half the items on a scale.
coefficient alpha
Whether a measure merely seems to be a reasonable way to measure some variable, based only on subjective judgment.
face validity
The degree to which a measure seems to cover the entire range of meanings within a concept.
content validity
The degree to which an instrument relates to an external criterion that is believed to be another indicator or measure of the same variable that the instrument intends to measure.
criterion-related validity
The degree to which an instrument accurately predicts a criterion that will occur in the future.
predictive validity
The degree to which an instrument corresponds to an external criterion that is known concurrently.
concurrent validity
Whether an instrument accurately differentiates between groups known to differ in respect to the variable being measured.
known groups validity
The degree to which a measure relates to other variables as expected within a system of theoretical relationships and as reflected by the degree of its convergent and discriminant validity.
construct validity
When a measure’s results correspond to the results of other methods of measuring the same construct.
convergent validity
When a measure’s results do not correspond as highly with measures of other constructs as they do with other measures of the same construct.
discriminant validity
The use of more than one imperfect data collection alternative in which each option is vulnerable to different potential sources of error.
triangulation
