Exercise 4 Identifying Good Measurement

PLEASE ANSWER THE FOLOWING QUESTIONS

1. For each measure below, indicate which kinds of reliability would need to be evaluated.
a. Researchers place unobtrusive video recording devices in the hallway of a local high school. Later, coders view tapes and code how many student are using cell phones in the 4-minute period between classes.
b. Clinical psychologists have developed a seven-item self-report measure to quickly identify people who are at risk for panic disorder.
c. Psychologists measure how long it takes a mouse to learn an eyeblink response. For 60 trials, they present a mouse with a distinctive blue light followed immediately by a puff of air. The 5th, 10th, and 15th trials are test trials, in which they present the blue light alone (without the air puff). The mouse is said to have learned the eyeblink response if observers record that it blinked its eyes in response to a test trial. The earlier in the 60 trials the mouse shows the eyeblink response, the faster it has learned the response.
d. Educational psychologists use teacher ratings of classroom shyness (on a nine-point scale, where 1 = “not at all shy in class” and 9 = “very shy in class”) to measure children’s temperament.
2. Consider how you might validate the nine-point classroom shyness rating example in question 1d. First, what behaviors might be relevant for establishing this rating’s criterion validity? Second, come up with ways to evaluate the convergent and divergent validity of this rating system. What traits should correlate strongly with shyness? What traits should correlate only weakly or not at all? Explain why you chose those traits.
3. This chapter included the example of a sales ability test. Search online for “sales ability assessment” and see what commercially available tests you can find. Do the websites present reliability or validity evidence for the measures? If so, what form does the evidence take? If not, what kind of evidence would you like to see? You might frame your predictions in the form: “If this sales ability test has convergent validity, I would it expect it to be correlated with …”; “If this sales ability test has discriminant validity, I would it expect it not to be correlated with …”; “If this sales ability test has criterion validity, I would it expect it to be correlated with ….”