Experimental Methods and Measures

Question 1

Content Validity

Answer 1

Four types of test validities are used to examine how well a research design tests what it was supposed to test. Content validity refers to the extent to which a design assesses the full scope of content that researchers intend to measure.

Question 2

Construct Validity

Answer 2

Construct validity tells us how well a test measures what it is supposed to test.

Question 3

Criterion Validity

Answer 3

Criterion validity refers to the extent to which a test correlates with an established “criterion” or existing measure.

Question 4

Predictive Validity

Answer 4

Predictive validity refers to the extent to which a test predicts a later score on some other test.

Question 5

An experiment is carried out to measure the relative effects that pregnancy has on the intelligence of pregnant mothers. Measurements of IQ are taken before, during, and after pregnancy. Later, critics of the study argue that testing IQ only captures some aspects of intelligence while missing others. These critics would argue that the study lacks which kind of validity?

Answer 5

Content Validity

Question 6

An evaluation is designed to predict whether individuals will develop diabetes. This evaluation is administered repeatedly over time with highly consistent results. However, it is later found that the test is extremely inaccurate in predicting diabetes onset and has several design flaws. This evaluation has:

Answer 6

Low validity but high reliability

Question 7

True or false: An experiment with high validity also had relatively high accuracy.

Answer 7

This statement is false. If a scientist measures every data point incorrectly this would produce “inaccurate” data. However, if by chance the error of each data point was distributed to produce a resultant mean that accurately represented the data set, the experiment would be considered “valid”. In other words, each individual measurement can have low accuracy, but this can still sometimes produce a “valid” data set.

Question 8

Acquiescence bias

Answer 8

Acquiescence bias is the tendency to agree with a statement, especially one that the respondent does not fully understand or is uncertain about.

Question 9

Quantitative methods always produce numbers

Answer 9

True

Question 10

Objective Measures

Answer 10

Unbiased and faced based

Question 11

Subjective Measures

Answer 11

Subject to opinion

Question 12

True or false: Quantitative research designs would be best for investigating a scientific topic in a field where few prior studies have been conducted.

Answer 12

This statement is false. In fields where not much knowledge has been collected, qualitative research, which is more exploratory, may provide more open-ended results. These open ended results can be used to come up with future research questions to be answered with quantitative designs.

Question 13

True or false: Subjective research designs are non-numerical by their intrinsic nature.

Answer 13

This statement is false. Subjective research is research where data collection is colored by participants’ intrinsic biases. For instance, questions such as, “How are you feeling today?” However, experimenters can have participants answer these questions by using numerical scales (e.g., “How are you feeling today – on this scale from 1 to 10?”).

Question 14

Extent to which a study’s results are both genuine and gernalizable

Answer 14

validity

Question 15

Internal Validity

Answer 15

The ability to draw causal conclusions, can we reliably say that a change in X explains the change in Y. Causal! The fewer confounding variables the better

Question 16

Confounding Variable

Answer 16

Outside factor that impacts both X and Y

Question 17

External Validity

Answer 17

Generalizability

Question 18

Test Validity

Answer 18

Construct, Content, Criterion, and Predicative

Question 19

Likert Scale

Answer 19

continuum of responses strongly agree to strongly disagree

Question 20

Self Reporting Bias

Answer 20

Social desirability bias (it makes them look better). Acquiescence bias (likelihood to say yes)

Question 21

A questionnaire question using a Likert scale could best be described as

Answer 21

subjective and quantitative

Question 22

Which of the following is used by scientists to say whether or not an experimental test correlates well with other existing tests trying to measure a similar outcome?

Answer 22

Criterion validity

Question 24

True or False: Operationalization is the process of carefully planning out of the details in a study’s design

Answer 24

This statement is false. Operationalization is the process of defining how a particular variable will be assessed or measured. An example of this would be defining “caffeine consumption” as “the number of milligrams of caffeine consumed per day”.