Exam 5: Identifying Good Measurement

In order to use the known groups paradigm to establish criterion validity, which of the following is necessary?

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

Establishing construct validity is most important for which of the following?

If a measurement looks like it is a plausible operationalization of a conceptual variable, then it has:

RESEARCH STUDY 5.3: Lauren, Sarah, and Jennifer are students in Dr.Shaffer's Research Methods class.For a class assignment, they are asked to devise an operational definition for romantic attachment, or love.Lauren decides to ask a group of married couples to report if they are in love with their spouse (1 indicates "Yes, I am in love" and 2 indicates "No, I am not in love").Sarah decides to watch couples sitting on campus and measure how close they sit together, assuming that people who sit closer together are more in love.Jennifer decides to recruit a group of newlyweds and measure the change in heart rate that occurs between the start of the study (when the person is alone) and the moment they see their spouse walk into the room. For each student described above, indicate whether the operational definition of her variable is categorical or quantitative.If a student's operational variable is categorical, explain whether it could or could not be made quantitative and how you would do that.

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 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?

Why are convergent and discriminant validity often evaluated together?

According to its conceptual definition, a variable should be related to a particular behavior.If a researcher is able to demonstrate that his measure of the variable is related to the behavior, then he has established which of the following?

Explain the difference between validity and reliability.Explain whether they are related or independent concepts.

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

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 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?

RESEARCH STUDY 5.4: Dr.Li is interested in creating a measurement of religiosity.According to the dictionary, religiosity is "the quality of being religious; piety; devoutness." He creates a measure comprising 10 statements.People respond to each statement using the following scale (1 = strongly disagree, 3 = neither agree nor disagree, 5 = strongly agree).Some of the statements are below. Statement 1: "I believe in a religion." Statement 2: "Part of who I am stems from my religious beliefs." Statement 3: "I believe that religion is unnecessary." Dr.Li gives his new measure to a group of 100 adults in order to test the internal validity of his measure.Draw two scatterplots: one that demonstrates the likely relationship between Statements 1 and 2 and one that demonstrates the likely relationship between Statements 1 and 3.Explain why you have drawn each scatterplot as you have.

How many subcategories of quantitative variables exist?

Explain why the textbook argues, "In fact, operationalizations are one place where creativity comes into the 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 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?

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 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?

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 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 .

Which of the following is true of operational definitions?

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

Imagine that you are trying to measure people's stress.Provide an example of measuring stress using a self-report measure, a physiological measure, and a behavioral measure.