Exam 11: Validity of Research Results in Quantitative, Qualitative, and Mixed Research

A researcher is carrying out a study of the effects of teaching different approaches to argumentation on writing persuasive essays. He pretests the participants by having them write three persuasive essays prior to the study, and three essays after the study. He has two individuals grade all the essays. The two individuals were given no training prior to the study. The essays from the students in the study actually looked worse rather than better after the study. Based on the information presented above, what threat to internal validity could explain the contradictory finding?

The extent to which a study can be generalized across time is called:

One way that a qualitative researcher can help reduce researcher bias is to use:

Name and describe three of the types of research validity or legitimation for mixed research.

Mr. Jones has demonstrated that his experimental reading program is very effective with 4th and 5th grade children with a learning disability. Ms. Thornton is using his experimental reading program but does not use it exactly like the instructions specify. Although Ms. Thornton has varied the way in which she is implementing the reading program she also finds it to be very effective with her students with learning disabilities. This is a demonstration that the reading program has:

When an extraneous variable systematically varies with the independent variable and influences the dependent variable, it is called:

Multiple validity is used to describe how well a researcher using mixed methods has tackled and resolved the applicable validity types.

Dr. Johnson conducted a research study in which he investigated the effect of three different methods of teaching mathematics to three different classes of fifth grade students. However, one of the classes had smarter students than the other two and as a result this class demonstrated the most improvement in their mathematics scores. In spite of this problem, he concluded that the method used to teach mathematics to this class of students was the most effective. In this experiment, the intellectual ability of the students in the various classes was:

A school counselor was concerned with the rising level of violence at the school in which she was employed so she decided to try an experimental program to reduce the level of violence. She identified two groups of violent children at her school and randomly assigned them to two groups. Both groups of children are taught effective methods of dealing with other children and with frustration, but one group is reinforced every time they use any of these techniques and isolated when they are violent. The other group is isolated and punished in the form of having to do additional duties such as cleaning the bathrooms whenever they act violently. Some of the participants in both groups fail to complete the study but most of the ones that drop out are in the punishment group. The study found that both groups reduced their violent behavior by equal amounts. Which is the best conclusion to draw from this study?

When an unplanned event occurs during the course of the study that might influence the dependent measure, this is a called:

Qualitative researchers are often concerned with nomothetic causation because it helps them to understand causes in specific situations and some of these causes might be unique to the situation or context.

Dr. Smith conducted a mixed methods study on delay of gratification. In this particular study, delay of gratification was measured by the amount of time that would elapse between when a person saw a desired food and when he or she would eat it. In addition, participants were interviewed about their reactions to the delay of gratification they experienced in this study. What type of legitimation did Dr. Smith use?

Interpretive validity relates to:

A researcher examines a program looking at the effects of mentoring on poor readers' reading achievement. He looks at two different schools. One serves as the control and the other the experimental group. Both schools had reading achievement that was around the 50th percentile. During the time that the mentoring program is in place in the experimental group, a statewide reading initiative is started in randomly selected schools. The experimental, but not the control school is involved in the statewide reading initiative. At the end of the year, the experimental group does better than the control. From the information presented above, a likely threat to the internal validity of the study is:

External validity refers to the degree to which the study results can be generalized to and across populations of persons, settings, times, outcomes, and treatment variations.

If you have addressed the interests, values, and viewpoints of multiple stakeholders in your mixed research study, then you have attained:

Which of the following statements is true?

In his study, Patrick obtained feedback from his participants and used many of their descriptive words in writing up the study for publication. These strategies provide evidence of:

Explain the meaning of statistical conclusion validity, construct validity, internal validity, and external validity and their importance in the research process.

When there is differential drop out between groups in a study, this problem is called: