Exam 5: Identifying Good Measurement

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?

Which of the following is true of the difference between predictive validity and concurrent validity?

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. -Refer to Research Study 5.2 above to answer the following question. 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?

Felipe plans to watch how positively or negatively teachers treat children in their classrooms who have ADHD for his research methods class.This is an example of what type of measurement?

An educational psychologist is testing the discriminant validity of a new measure of numerical learning difficulties.He gives his measure to a group of students along with another measure of verbal learning difficulties,which he predicts should not be strongly related to numerical learning difficulties.Which of the following correlations would the psychologist hope to find in order to establish discriminant validity?

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. -Refer to Research Study 5.3 above to answer the following question. 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.

Another word for discriminant validity is ___________ validity.

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. -Refer to Research Study 5.3 above to answer the following question. For each student described above,indicate whether the operational definition of her variable is self-reported,observational,or physiological.

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.

How many subcategories of quantitative variables exist?

Imagine that you are trying to measure people's stress.Create a quantitative definition of stress that is ordinal,interval,and ratio.

RESEARCH STUDY 5.1 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 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." -Refer to Research Study 5.1 above to answer the following question. Before using the measure in her study,Dr.Valencia analyzes the data she gets from her students.She looks for 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?

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." -Refer to Research Study 5.4 above to answer the following question. Given the above situation,explain the difference between predictive validity,convergent validity,and discriminant validity.Why is each one important?

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. -Refer to Research Study 5.2 above to answer the following question. To test his measure,Dr.Sheffield gives his measure to a group of people in GA and another group in AA.He finds that people in the GA group have higher scores on his new measure than people in the AA group.This procedure is known as a:

Why are convergent and discriminant validity often evaluated together?

Serena plans to interview several teachers about their attitude toward teaching children who have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)for her research methods class.This is an example of what type of measurement?

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.

What is the difference between a ratio scale of measurement and an interval scale 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. -Refer to Research Study 5.2 above to answer the following question. Dr.Sheffield has now decided that he wants to test his measure on some university students (who some estimates say have a 6% prevalence rate of compulsive gambling).He has a group of 100 university students complete his measure.He also has them complete two other measures (one that measures addictive behavior in general and one that measures general attitudes toward gambling).He finds that his new measure is positively associated with each of these other measures.This procedure has provided evidence for the _______________ of Dr.Sheffield's measure.

Which of the following is possible?