Psych 130 Quiz 5

Why are convergent and discriminant validity often evaluated together?

Both involve collecting information from a lot of psychological measures of theoretical interest.

Which of the following NOT is possible?

A measure is valid but not reliable.

Todd is also 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

Dr. Sheffield has now decided that he wants to test his measure on some university students (who some estimates say have a 6% prevalence rate of compulsive gambling). He has a group of 100 university students complete his measure. He also has them complete two other measures (one that measures addictive behavior in general and one that measures general attitudes toward gambling). He finds that his new measure is positively associated with each of these other measures. This procedure has provided evidence for the ________ of Dr. Sheffield's measure.

Convergent validity

A correlation-based statistic called ________ is commonly used to determine internal reliability.

Cronbach's alpha

Another word for discriminant validity is ________ validity.

Divergent

Dr. Valencia is concerned about the validity of the measure of narcissism recommended by her colleague. She sends a copy of the measure to the faculty members in her psychology department to look at and they all tell her it looks like it will measure narcissism. She now has evidence of which of the following?

Face validity

Before using the measure in her study, Dr. Valencia gives the measure to a group of students on Tuesday. She gives the measure to them again on Thursday. She then compares the scores between the two days. This is a test of which of the following?

Test-retest reliability

The following scenario applies to questions 13 to 16: Dr. Valencia is considering conducting a study examining whether narcissistic people have poorer social interactions 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 Mayo 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. Valencia is concerned whether her measure will really measure narcissism or if it will measure some other related concept. She is concerned about the scale's ________.

Validity

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 group have higher scores on his new measure than people in the AA group. Why did Dr. Sheffield do this?

To obtain evidence for criterion validity.

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

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.

Before using the measure in her study, Dr. Valencia analyzes the data she gets from her students. She looks at the relationship between each of the individual questions. She sees that participants who agree with Question 1 also agree with Question 3 and disagree with Question 2. This is a test of which of the following?

Internal reliability

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

Dr. Sheffield has decided to test the discriminant validity of his new measure. He has a group of first-time Gamblers Anonymous (GA) attendants complete his measure and finds that they score higher than a group of people who do not attend the group. Which of the following results would provide evidence for discriminant validity?

He finds that the measure of gambling is not correlated with a measure of life satisfaction in the same two groups of people.

What is the difference between a ratio scale of measurement and an 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.

The following scenario applies to questions 17 to 20: 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 test 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.

Which of the following is NOT an example of physiological measurement?

Number of panic attacks a patient reports

For his research methods class, Felipe plans to watch how teachers treat children in their classrooms who have ADHD. He will evaluate how positively or negatively the children are treated. This is an example of what type of measurement?

Observational measurement.

Which of the following is true of operational definitions?

The specification of operational definitions is one of the creative aspects of the research process.