Exam 5: Identifying Good Measurement

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 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?

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." -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.Dr.Valencia is examining the scatterplot of the data she collected on day 1 and day 2.On the scatterplot,she sees that the dots are very close to forming a diagonal line.This indicates which of the following?

Dr.Sarolli is planning on measuring literacy (defined as the ability to read and write written text in one's native language).He decides he wants to create a quantitative operational definition.Create an ordinal,interval,and ratio way to measure literacy.

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." -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?

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?

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 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?

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?

Which of the following NOT is possible?

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 Statement 1 and Statement 2 and one that demonstrates the likely relationship between Statement 1 and Statement 3.Explain why you have drawn each scatterplot as you have.

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?

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 self-reported,observational,or physiological.

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

Your friend Dominic is complaining about having to take the Graduate Record Examination (GRE),a test similar to the ACT and SAT that is required to go to graduate school.Your friend Shakendra tells him he shouldn't complain,as statistics show that GRE scores are related to graduate school GPA.Shakendra is speaking to the ________ of the test.

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

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." -Provide a suggestion for how Dr.Li could establish the face validity of his measure and a suggestion for how he could establish the content validity of his measure.

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

Your friend Dominic is complaining about having to take the Graduate Record Examination (GRE),a test similar to the ACT and SAT that is required to go to graduate school.He complains that it doesn't really measure how well he will likely do in graduate school.Dominic is questioning the ________ of the test.

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?

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.

Which of the following is true of operational definitions?