Week 2 - Operationalisation of Constructs

Question 1

What are the 4 goals of science?

Answer 1

• Description (measurement of constructs)
• Prediction (relationship between constructs)
• Understanding (when and why does relationship exist?) - Control (can we use this to change things?)

Question 2

What are the 4 criterion for scientific evidence?

Answer 2

• Empirical
• Objective
• Systematic
• Controlled

Question 3

What are the two types of research?

Answer 3

• Basic vs Applied (general to specific)

- Laboratory vs Field (controlled vs naturalistic)

Question 4

What is the Popperian scientific method?

Answer 4

• Karl Popper (1902-1994)
• FALSIFICATION IS KEY
• Observation > question > hypotheses > predictions > experiments > hypotheses either supported or rejected

Question 5

What are some questionable research practices?

Answer 5

• P Hacking (manipulating data to ensure p is <0.05

- Harking (hypothesising after results are known)

Question 6

How to write out hypotheses:

Answer 6

• Typically “if, then” structure
  e. g., “IF participants are in a happy mood, THEN they will be more likely to help someone else”
• must be precise, testable, falsifiable

Question 7

What are IV’s and DV’s?

Answer 7

IV = the cause
DV = the effect

Question 8

What are the 4 elements of the experimental method?

Answer 8

• Manipulation of Independent Variable
• Measurement of Dependent Variable
• Random Assignment to Condition
• Control Over Extraneous Variables

Question 9

How to check on manipulation:

Answer 9

• PILOT TESTING (seperate study created to test manipulation)
• MANIPULATION CHECKS (measurement conducted during study to check whether IV has had expected effect)
• INTERNAL ANALYSES (based on manipulation check, only use participants for whom the IV ‘had the desired effect’ - random assignment no longer involved)

Question 10

What is translation validity?

Answer 10

“the closeness with which the study’s intended meaning of constructs matches their operationalisation”

• A type of Construct Validity?
• Hate = fMRI results; rat hunger = time since feeding
• Constructs are unmeasurable; all operationalisations may be invalid (but correlated).

Question 11

How to operationalise a DV with behavioural measures:

Answer 11

• Measures of overt behavior (frequency, rate, speed,
  duration, latency, extent, intensity etc.)
• Behaviouroid measures (intentions)
• Physiological measures
• Indirect measures (reaction time, recall)

Question 12

How to operationalise a DV with verbal measures:

Answer 12

• Questionnaires
• Interviews
• Rating Scales

Question 13

What are the advantages to verbal measures?

Answer 13

• Easy to Use
• Face Validity
• Can look at more aspects of DV
• Subtle Distinctions can be Measured

Question 14

What are the disadvantages of verbal measures?

Answer 14

• too indirect?
• influenced by social desirability
• participants may try to give ‘correct’ answers
• questions may be difficult to understand
• less impactful and involving for participant

Question 15

Pros and cons for using your own scales?

Answer 15

Pros:

• often more focussed, precise for question under test
• seems relevant to participants

Cons:

• reliability, validity untested
• using existing tests helps build research literature

Question 16

What is sensitivity in research?

Answer 16

Sensitivity relates to the test’s ability to identify positive results.
are you getting precise measurements of small difference?

Question 17

What is restriction of range in research?

Answer 17

using dichotomous outcomes - ceiling or floor effects? 
floor effect (sometimes called a “basement effect”) occurs when there is some lower limit on a survey or questionnaire and a large percentage of respondents score near this lower limit. The opposite of this is known as a ceiling effect.

Question 18

What is demand characteristics in research?

Answer 18

• reactivity, social desirability

Question 19

What is internal consistency in reliability?

Answer 19

• the items of any scale created all measure the same thing

- assesses the correlation between multiple items in a test that are intended to measure the same construct

Question 20

What is inter-rater reliability?

Answer 20

• if using judges/raters, are they reporting that they see the same thing?
• the extent to which two or more raters (or observers, coders, examiners) agree. It addresses the issue of consistency of the implementation of a rating system

Question 21

What is construct validity?

Answer 21

the extent to which the measure ‘behaves’ in a way consistent with theoretical hypotheses and represents how well scores on the instrument are indicative of the theoretical construct.

Question 22

What is convergent validity?

Answer 22

how closely the new scale is related to other variables and other measures of the same construct. Not only should the construct correlate with related variables but it should not correlate with dissimilar, unrelated ones.

Question 23

What is discriminant validity?

Answer 23

demonstrated by evidence that measures of constructs that theoretically should not be highly related to each other are, in fact, not found to be highly correlated to each other.

Question 24

What is Criterion-related validity?

Answer 24

indicates how well the scores or responses of a test converge with criterion variables with which the test is supposed to converge

Question 25

What is moderation in terms of effect type?

Answer 25

When one variable determines whether the effect of another variable is larger or smaller (or non-existent).

Question 26

What is mediation in terms of effect types?

Answer 26

When a variable (or more than one variable) can be
identified that explains “why” variations in one variable
influence/cause changes in another.