Validity And Reliability Flashcards
What is reliability?
The extent to which a finding can be consistently reproduced
What is validity?
That something is measuring what it intends to measure
What are the different types of validity?
Internal validity: the extent to which a finding can be said to be real and caused by EF (…or would it have occurred anyway)
External validity: the extent to which a finding can be generalised across people, places and times
Face validity: the extent to which a study appears to measure what it intends to
Construct validity: the test measures the behaviour it intends to measure
Concurrent validity: test agrees with other tests of same ability
What are the different types of reliability?
Inter rater reliability: findings are consistent when same test is performed with different rater
Test retest reliability: findings are consistent when same test is repeated on a different occasion
What is the problem with ecological validity?
Ecological validity is the extent to which a research study replicates a real world situation which allows us to generalise more easily
But in attaining ecological validity we risk jeopardising reliability as the more a study resembles a real life situation, the less controls are in place in the study and so this makes it difficult to draw any cause and effect relationships as there are too many extraneous variables
Therefore a researcher needs to decide/draw a balance between reliability and ecological validity when designing a study
