Ch.5
Which of the following is NOT possible?
A measure is valid but not reliable
What is the difference between a ratio scale of measurement and as interval scale of measurement?
A ratio scale of measurement has a zero value that actually means "nothing" or "the absence of something", but an interval scale does not.
RESEARCH STUDY 5.2: Dr. Sheffield is a clinical psychologist who specializes in treating pathological gambling. Pathological gambling is defined as being unable to resist impulses to gamble. Bothered by not having a good measure that he can give to clients to determine whether they are suffering from this condition, he creates a new measure of pathological gambling. The measure has 15 questions, and it takes 20 minutes to complete. To test his measure, Dr. Sheffield gives his measure to a group of his clients and at the same time measures how many times they have been gambling in the past month. He predicts that clients who score higher on his measure will also report gambling more times in the past month. This procedure is meant to provide evidence for which of the following?
Criterion Validity
In order to use the known groups paradigm to establish criterion validity, which of the following is necessary?
After testing, the groups should have significantly different scores on the measure.
An educational psychologist is testing the discriminant validity of a new measure of numerical learning difficulties. He gives his measure to a group of students along with another measure of verbal learning difficulties, which he predicts should not be strongly related to numerical learning difficulties. Which of the following correlations would the psychologist hope to find in order to establish discriminant validity?
r=0.18
A correlation coefficient and a scatterplot both provide which of the following pieces of information?
the strength and driection of the relationship between two measurements
Naomi is studying the effect of popularity on academic success for her research methods project. To do this, she has elementary school students rate how popular each member of their class is. She then uses this information to rank the students on popularity (e.g., John is the most popular, Vanessa is the second-most popular). Which of the following best describes this variable?
An ordinal scale of measurement
For her research methods class, Serena plans to interview several teachers about their attitude toward teaching children who have attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). This is an example of what type of measurement?
Self-report measurement
In a scatterplot, the direction of the relationship can be seen by the
slope of the line
Todd is studying the effect of popularity on academic success for his research methods project he decides to measure popularity by asking each Elementary School student to tell him how many friends he or she has. He assumes that more friends means the student is more popular which of the following best describes this variable?
a ratio scale of measurement
Fatima is trying to measure gender roles stereotypes using a gender roles survey. She believes that her participants will be able to tell that she is measuring gender role stereotypes because the survey looks like it is measuring stereotypes. Fatima believes that her scale has what type of validity?
Face
What does it mean that reliability is necessary but not sufficient for validity?
If a measure is valid, it is also reliable.
When using correlation coefficients to evaluate reliability which of the following is undesirable?
a negative correlation coefficient
Which of the following is an example of physiology measurement?
measurements of hormones in the bloodstream.
RESEARCH STUDY 5.1: Dr. Rodriquez is considering conducting a study examining whether narcissistic people have poorer romantic relationships than those who are not narcissistic. One of her first tasks is to determine which of her participants are narcissistic and which are not. She decides to use the scale created by a colleague, the Donal scale. Question 1 reads, "I tend not to think about other people as much as I think about myself." Question 2 reads, "I do not have a high opinion of myself." Question 3 reads, "I think other people think I am really special." Before using the measure in her study, Dr. Rodriquez analyzes the data she gets from her students. She looks at the relationship between each of the individual questions. She sees that the participants who agree with Q1 also agree with Q3 and disagree with Q2. This is a test of which of the following?
Internal validity
In interrogating the construct validity of a measure, which question should a researcher ask?
Is there enough evidence that this measure is valid?
Danesh has just read an article that describes a study that used a survey completed by participants to asses anxiety level in adults. he is interested in the reliability of the survey and finds that the authors have provided information about both internal and test-retest reliability. However, there in no information about interrater reliability. Which of the following reasons explains why the authors do not report interrater reliability?
The anxiety scale is a self-report measure, and interrater reliability is needed only when two or more observer are providing ratings.
Which of the following is true of operational definitions.
The specification of operational definitions is one of the creative aspects of research process.
RESEARCH STUDY 5.1: Dr. Rodriquez is considering conducting a study examining whether narcissistic people have poorer romantic relationships than those who are not narcissistic. One of her first tasks is to determine which of her participants are narcissistic and which are not. She decides to use the scale created by a colleague, the Donal scale. Question 1 reads, "I tend not to think about other people as much as I think about myself." Question 2 reads, "I do not have a high opinion of myself." Question 3 reads, "I think other people think I am really special." Dr. Rodriquez calculates a correlation (r) to examine the relationship between Q1 and Q2 and between Q1 and Q3. She finds a correlation coefficient of r=-0.73 between Q1 and Q2 and a correlation coefficient of r=-0.74 between Q1 and Q3. Which of the following is true of her findings?
There appears to be good internal reliability in the scale.
Dr.Pierre is interested in studying levels of anxiety in children who have lived through a major natural disaster. As she plans her study, she is considering various operational definitions of anxiety. Which of the following is an example of an operational definition for anxiety that she could consider?
changes in heart rates while viewing images of the aftereffect of a natural disaster.
RESEARCH STUDY 5.2: Dr. Sheffield is a clinical psychologist who specializes in treating pathological gambling. Pathological gambling is defined as being unable to resist impulses to gamble. Bothered by not having a good measure that he can give to clients to determine whether they are suffering from this condition, he creates a new measure of pathological gambling. The measure has 15 questions, and it takes 20 minutes to complete. Dr.Sheffield gives his measure to his supervisor, who is also an expert in pathological gambling. His supervisor says that his measure appears to tell all the components of pathological gambling, including feeling restless when attempting to stop gambling, jeopardizing jobs in order to keep gambling, and using gambling to escape from problems and a bad mood. Given this information, Dr.Sheffield's measure has evidence of which of the following?
content validity
If a measurement looks like it is a plausible operationalization of a conceptual variable, then it has
face validity
Dr.Leising conducts observational studies of adolescents interacting with peers during problem-solving tasks. She records each 30-minute interaction and then has the students in her laboratory code prosocial behaviors in the adolescence as they view each video. Because she has several students coding the videos, she calculates how reliable their scores are with each other by having them all code the same videos periodically. Which type of reliability is Dr.Leising using?
interrater reliability
Hosea is studying the relationship between caffeine consumptions and problem-solving ability. Which of the following is a quantitative way to operationalize problem-solving ability?
the time spent solving a math problem
RESEARCH STUDY 5.2: Dr. Sheffield is a clinical psychologist who specializes in treating pathological gambling. Pathological gambling is defined as being unable to resist impulses to gamble. Bothered by not having a good measure that he can give to clients to determine whether they are suffering from this condition, he creates a new measure of pathological gambling. The measure has 15 questions, and it takes 20 minutes to complete. To test his measure, Dr.Sheffield gives his measure to a group of people in Gamblers Anonymous (GA) and another group in Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). He finds that people in the GA groups have higher scores on his mew measure than people in the AA group. Why did Dr.Sheffield do this?
to obtain evidence for criterion validity
