Methods of psych - Chapter 5

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.

Jiyun has just conducted a study examining the association between a child's level of impulsivity and the amount of corporal punishment used by their parents. She used a questionnaire about discipline strategies to assess corporal punishment. She calculated the scale's internal reliability as .85 and concluded that her scale had good internal reliability. Jiyun most likely calculated reliability using what statistic?

Cronbach's alpha

Which types of validity are a subjective assessment?

Face and Construct Validity why: Because we can use data for other validities, these can be argued?

True or false? A measure that is reliable will always be valid.

False

True or false? The validity of a measure is the same as its reliability.

False

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 assess anxiety levels 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 is 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 observers are providing ratings.

True or false? A measure can be very reliable but not very valid.

True

True or false? Establishing reliability in a measure is not sufficient for validity.

True

The conceptual definition

a researcher's definition of a variable at the theoretical level

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 gives the measure to a group of participants on the first day of the semester and again on the last day of the semester. Dr. Rodriquez is examining the scatterplot of the data she collected on the first day of the semester and the last day of the semester. On the scatterplot, she sees that the dots are very close to forming a diagonal line. This indicates which of the following?

a strong relationship

What is the term for a researcher's definition of the variable in question at a theoretical level?

conceptual definition

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 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

When your scale does not correlate with other, unrelated procedures or scales, it has ________ validity.

discriminant

Content validity

evaluates how well a measure taps into all aspects of a particular variable

Which types of reliability can be analyzed with scatterplots?

interrater reliability and test-retest reliability

Reliability

is a measure's ability to remain consistent

Face validity

is the extent to which a given measure appears to be measuring the variable in question.

Observational measure

records behaviors or traces of behaviors

Physiological measure

records biological information from a living thing

Self-report measure

records participants' own views of themselves

Validity

refers to a measure's ability to accurately represent the variable the researcher is investigating

test-retest reliability

refers to whether results are uniform after repeated use of a measure

Interrater reliability

refers to whether results are uniform when multiple administrators use the measure

Criterion validity

represents how well a measure relates to actual behavior

Which type of measure operationalizes a variable by recording the answers of a participant using a questionnaire?

self-report measure

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

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 wants to establish the discriminant validity of his pathological gambling measure. He gives his measure and three others to a group of 100 people. Which of the following provides the best evidence for discriminant validity?

that his measure is not strongly correlated with a measure of impulsivity

What can you learn from a scatterplot that you cannot learn from the correlation coefficient r?

the specific values of each pair of measurement

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. If Dr. Sheffield's measure does not actually measure pathological gambling, his measure is said to lack which of the following?

validity

If Jamal wanted to test the consistency of participants' responses on a survey at two different times, what would he use?

wait for correct answer

In looking at a scatterplot of interrater reliability, why would a researcher want to see all the dots close to the line of agreement?

wait for correct answer

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 coefficient (r) to examine the relationship between Question 1 and Question 2 and between Question 1 and Question 3. She finds a correlation coefficient of r = -0.73 between Questions 1 and 2 and a correlation coefficient of r = 0.74 between Questions 1 and 3. Which of the following is true of her findings?

wait for right answer

Hosea is studying the relationship between caffeine consumption and problem-solving ability. Which of the following is a categorical way to operationalize caffeine consumption?

whether the participant drank coffee in the 24 hours prior to the study

Internal reliability

will generate similar responses across all of the items, even with different wording