Exam 5: Variables, Reliability, and Validity

Split-half method is a measure of validity in which a measure is divided into half and the two halves are compared.

Gender is an example of a subject variable.

Which of the following is not one of the three most common types of validity?

A subject variable cannot be manipulated.

Drews et al.2008) manipulated driving conditions i.e., driving while talking to a friend on the cell phone and driving while talking to a friend in the car) to see if this influenced the number of driving errors committed.Participants completed the task on a driving simulator.The simulator was used to increase which of the following?

Validity is __________.

A correlation coefficient of .40 in a measure is generally seen as reliable.

Recently, the Mozart effect was studied by Jones and Estell by dividing high school participants into two groups.The first group listened to Mozart's music and the second group did not.Both groups completed a series of spatial problems tasks.Results showed that the group of participants who listened to Mozart's music had higher scores on the spatial problems tasks.In this example, what is the dependent variable?

The independent variable is the variable being manipulated.

Drews et al.2008) manipulated driving conditions i.e., driving while talking to a friend on the cell phone and driving while talking to a friend in the car) to see if this influenced the number of driving errors committed.Participants completed the task on a driving simulator.In this design, the number of driving errors committed served as the __________.

A researcher is interested in determining if different exercise programs have an influence on the amount of weight that participants lose.Upon arriving to the experiment, the researcher assigns the participants to different exercise programs and measures the amount of weight lost over a two-month period.In this example, the exercise programs are the _________.

The dependent variable is the variable being measured.

A variable is an event or characteristic that has at least two possible values.

External validity is the extent to which obtained results in a study can be generalized to other settings.

A correlation coefficient of __________ in a measure is generally seen as very reliable.

Consider the following research question, "Does the type of advertisement influence the level of interest in the toothpaste?" To answer this question, a marketing researcher has participants listen to the radio advertisement or watch the television advertisement about the toothpaste.Next, the researcher asks all participants to indicate their interest in buying the toothpaste.In this example, what is the dependent variable?

__________ is confidence in saying the observed change in the dependent variable is due to the independent variable.

__________ states that your measure should be similar to other measures of the same variable.

Validity is the consistency of a measure to produce similar results on different occasions.

The independent variable is __________.