Reliability

Question 1

What is reliability?

Answer 1

Reliability is consistency, how evidence gathered is reliable, anyone else repeating would get similar results

Question 2

What is internal reliability?

Answer 2

To the extent to which something is consistent within itself. If you’re doing a questionnaire on how happy someone is then all questions should be measuring happiness in the same way. To test for internal reliability is to do a split in half method, where questions are split into halves and correlated to each other.

Question 3

What is external reliability?

Answer 3

To the extent to which something is consistent over several different occasions. Give questionnaire one week and give it week later same results should be expected.

Question 4

How to do deal with issues of reliability?

Answer 4

Low internal reliability=remove or change item from our measure that are lowering it
Low external reliability=Identify what it is, Timing of the test is important if duration between the tests is too short then the participants may recall the first test

Question 5

How to improve validity?

Answer 5

Do a pilot study. Small scale version of the study is done on a small sample of the participants in order to iron out any issues. Instead of giving questionnaire to our target population, give it to a small sample to test internal and external reliability