Identifying Good Measurement Flashcards
What are self-report measures?
A method of measuring a variable in which people answer questions about themselves in a questionnaire or interview.
What are informant reports?
A persone ho observes or knows the target well responds to a series of questions about the target.
What are observational measures?
A variable measured by recording observable behaviours or physical traces of behaviours.
What are physiological measures?
A variable measured by recording biological data.
What are categorical variables?
A variable whose levels are categories. E.g., gender, hair colour, etc. AKA nominal variables.
What are quantitative variables?
A variable whose values can be recorded as meaningful numbers.
What are the three scales of measurement?
Ordinal, interval, and ratio.
What is an example of an ordinal scale?
A 5-point scale.
What is an example of an interval scale?
Temperature in degrees (no true zero, each number represents equal intervals between levels).
What is an example of a ratio scale?
Weight (has a true zero).
What is reliability?
The consistency of a measure.
What are the three types of reliability?
Test-retest, interrater, and internal.
What is test-retest reliability?
The consistency in results every time a measure is used.
What is interrater reliability?
The degree to which two or more coders or observers agree in their ratings of a set of targets.
What is internal reliability?
In a measuring instrument that contains several items, the consistency in a pattern of answers, no matter how a question is phrased.
What correlation coefficient is needed for good test-retest reliability?
0.50 or above.
What correlation coefficient is needed for good interrater reliability?
0.70 or above.
When evaluating interrater reliability, what Greek letter denotes the extent to which the two raters placed participants in the same category?
Kappa (ϰ)
What is Cronbach’s alpha used to determine?
A scale’s internal reliability.
When is Cronbach’s alpha deemed high enough?
When it exceed 0.70
Why is construct validity so important in psychology?
Because research deals with such abstract concepts.
