week 2 PTTR (validity and reliability of measures)

Question 1

How do you assess the reliability of an operational definition?

Answer 1

If the measure of a concept yields similar measures for multiple measures of the same concept, we say that the persons measuring device yields high reliability

e.g
if we measured the same persons intelligence with different forms of an IQ test on different days, and got similar results, we would say that the measure has high reliability

Question 2

What is a concept with an indirect operational definition?

Answer 2

When a concept consists of several concepts which have their own individually operationalised definition.

e.g
The concept of type A personality consists of the concepts of the subordinate concepts of: a strong desire to compete, hostility to others, etc

Question 3

What are researchers two basic categories of ethical responsibility?

Answer 3

• responsibility to the individuals who participate in the studies
• responsibility to the discipline of science to be accurate and honest in the reporting of their research

Question 4

What regulates psychological research? (US)

Answer 4

• APA ethis code
• Federal, state and local guidelines

Question 5

What is the goal of the APA ethics code?

Answer 5

The protection of the individuals and groups with whom the psychologists work

Question 6

What are the 10 elements in the APA ethics guide concening human participants?

Answer 6

1. No harm
2. Privacy and confidentiality
3. Institutional approval (must get approval from the uni)
4. Competence (must only conduct research in the boundaries of your competence)
5. Record keeping (must maintain confientiality)
6. informed consent
7. Dispensing with informed consent (only allowed in certain conditions)
8. offering inducements for research participation (must avoid offering excessive or innapropriate inducements)
9. deception (any deception must be justified and avoiding distress)
10. debreifing

Question 7

What are 3 componenents of informed consent?

Answer 7

1. information (is the participant being told everything about the study?)
2. understanding (do they have the capacity to fully understand the consent)
3. voluntary participation (is the participant deciding to particate of their own free will or could they be coerced?)

Question 8

what are 10 components of informed consent forms?

Answer 8

1. overview
2. description of procedures
3. risks and inconveniences
4. benefits
5. costs and economic considerations
6. alternative treatments
7. voluntary participation (told they can decline at any time)
8. questions and further information
9. signature lines

Question 9

What is the difference between active and passive deception?

Answer 9

Passive deception is the withholding or omitting of infomation

Active deception is the presenting of misinformation

Question 10

What are 3 specific areas of responsibility when a study involves deception

Answer 10

1. the deception mustbe justified
2. the researcher cannot conceal information about research that is expected to cause physical pain or emotional distress
3. The researcher must debrief the participant

Question 11

What 4 factors can influence the effectiveness of a debreifing?

Answer 11

1. the participants suspicion (how likely they are to think the debreifing is merely a continuation of the deception)
2. the nature of the deception (debreifing is less effective with active deception)
3. the sincerity of the experimenter
4. the time interval between the end of the study and the debreifing (the sooner the better)

Question 12

what is the difference between confidentiality and anonimity?

Answer 12

confidentiality is the practice of keeping private the information obtained from an individual

anonimity is ensuring that the participants name is not associated with the information obtained from the

Question 13

how does confidentiality benefit both participants and researchers?

Answer 13

• the participants are protected from emotional stress or embarassment
• the researchers are more likely to obtain willing and honest participants

Question 14

What is the definition of a construct?

Answer 14

Hypothetical attributes or mechanisms that help describe behaviour in a theory

Question 15

what is a limitation of using operational definitions of constructs?

Answer 15

sometimes the operational measures of the construct are not a full and complete representation of the construct itself, perhaps because the construct itself cannot be measured

this may be because the variable contains many aspect and the operational measure only measures one thing

or because the operational measure also measures things that arent the target variaboe

Question 16

how can you demonstrate the validity and reliability of measurements?

Answer 16

• by demostrating the consistency of a relationship between two different measurements of the same thing
• you can do this by creating a scatter plot to see if the measurements have a strong positive/negative relationship, or no relationship at all
  e. g measuring the performance on a math test by counting the number of correct answers and the number of errors, and comparing these two measures using a scatter graph

Question 17

what is concurrent validity of a measure?

Answer 17

when scores obtained from a new measure are directly related to scores obtained from an established measure of the same variable

Question 18

what is predictive validity of a measure?

Answer 18

when scores obtained from a measure accurately predict behaviour according to a theory

Question 19

What is construct validity?

Answer 19

requires that the scores obtained from a measurement
procedure behave exactly the same as the variable itself. Construct validity is based on many research studies that use the same measurement procedure and grows gradually as each new study contributes more evidence.

Question 20

what is convergent validity?

Answer 20

when there is a strong relationship between the scores
obtained from two (or more) different methods of measuring the same construct.

Question 21

what is divergent validity of a measure?

Answer 21

Divergent validity is demonstrated by showing little or no relationship between
the measurements of two different constructs.

Question 22

what are 3 common sources of error?

Answer 22

observer error

environmental changes

participant changes

Question 23

what are 3 ways of measuring reliability?

Answer 23

succesive measurements

simultaneous measurements

internal consistency

Question 24

what are two types of succesive measurements as a measure of reliability?

Answer 24

• comparing the scores obtained from two successive measurements. This is test retest reliability
• parralel forms reliability is when different versions of the instrument are used for the test and retest. the reliability is then determined by computing a correlation to see if theres a relationship between the two measures

Question 25

what is simultaneous measures as a way of assesing the reliabiltiy of a measure

Answer 25

• for when measurements are obtain by direct observations of behaviours
• two or more seperate observers are used who simultaneously record measurements
• the degree of agreement between the observers is called the inter rate reliability

Question 26

What is inter rate reliability?

Answer 26

when two observers observe the same behaviour at the same time

the level of agreement they have about the measure is the inter rate reliability

Question 27

what is internal consistency when assesing the reliability of a measure

Answer 27

• often complex constructs are measured using multiple items or questions, with the overall score being an average between the items
• if this is the case there should be some consistency between the scores of each item
• sometimes researchers split the total items in half and work out a score for each half. they then compute the correlation between the two halfs in split-half reliability

Question 28

how do you obtain split half reliability measures?

Answer 28

Divergent validity is demonstrated by showing little or no relationship between
the measurements of two different constructs.

Question 29

how is validity related to reliability?

Answer 29

• in order for a measure to be valid it has to be reliable
• however a measure does not have to be valid to be reliable`