Validity, Reliablity, Standardization, Generalization, Experimentation In Psychology

1. VALIDITY:
What is validity?
Validity is an attribute of your inference, not the instrument itself, which may be more
valid for some inferences and/or populations than others (e.g. self-esteem survey in
Latin).
What’s more in validity?
Now I’d like to share some more about validity.
Validity: A valid argument is one in which it is not possible
for the conclusion to be false if the premises are true. This
is a very daring statement, not about what is actually the
case, but about what could possibly be the
case. It is cooperative, when considering validity, to consider the notion
of possible worlds. I can picture a possible world in which grass is blue,
and I can picture a possible world in which trees are blue. But think
about the following argument:
Premise: If grass is blue, then trees are blue.
Premise: Grass is blue.
Conclusion: Trees are blue.
We can add more stuff in validity. The validity of an argument should be distinguished
from the genuineness of the conclusion. If one or more of the premises is false, the
conclusion of a valid argument may be false. I’d like to give an example. “All
mammals are four-footed animals; all people are mammals; therefore, all people are
four-footed animals” is a valid argument with a false conclusion. On the other hand, an
invalid argument may by possibility have a true conclusion. “Some animals are two-
footed; all people are animals; for that reason, all people are two-footed” happens to
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2. have a true conclusion, but the argument is not valid. Logical validity depends on the
form of the argument, not on its content. If the argument were valid, some other term
could be substituted for all occurrences of any one of those used and validity would not
be affected. By substituting “four-footed” for “two-footed,” it can be seen that the
premises could both be true and the conclusion false. Thus the argument is invalid, even
though it has a true conclusion.
RELIABILITY:
What is reliability?
The extent to which the same result is achieved when a measure is repeatedly applied
to the same group.
One more definition I’d like to present is “In assessment, the consistency of an
assessment outcome; for example, different assessors using the same evidence making
the same judgment, or the same assessor making the same judgment about the same
evidence on different occasions.”
According to St-Andrews university’s psychology department reliability is “The
consistency with which a measuring instrument (such as a psychometric test) performs
its' function, gauged, for example, by comparing test scores from the same subjects at
different times.”
What’s more in reliability?
Reliability refers to the consistency of a measure. An analysis is considered reliable if we
obtain the identical product constantly. For example, if a test is planned to measure a
trait (for instance introversion), then each time the test is administered to a subject, the
results should be just about the same. Unluckily, it is impossible to calculate reliability
accurately, but there are more than a few different ways to guess reliability.
Examples of reliability:
Susie returned her friend’s bike the at
•
3:00, just as she’d promised.
Eddie sorted the laundry exactly as his
•
mother had shown him how to do.
Jim phoned his friend, Ben to say that he would be a half hour late because his
•
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3. mom had to drop his brother off at hockey first.
Chris did the dishes even though he was not in the mood.
•
Karen was asked to bring felts for her group project and she knew that she had
•
none at home, so she made sure to borrow them off of a friend before class.
Justification of examples:
In each of the above examples, people are shown keeping their commitments to the
best of their abilities. In the first example, Susie is sure to return something that she
has rented at the accurate time she said she would. A vital part of being reliable is that
you are unsurprisingly dependable and others do not need to be anxious that what they
have asked you to do will be completed. In this case, Susie’s friend is sure to lend her
the bike another time since she does not need to worry that it will be back on time.
Another part of being reliable is treating jobs like they are a sacred trust, no matter how
small that job may seem to be. Eddy’s mother has shown him how to sort the laundry
before and he knows that it is important to her that it is done the correct way, so he is
sure to try his best. Sometimes, when you are trying to do what you have promised,
things come about that are out of your control, as we can see in the third example. It is
not Jim’s fault that he is going to be late, but he still makes sure to let his friend know
what is going on. In the fourth example, Chris has said that he would do the dishes, but
later does not feel like it. He is showing reliability because he does it anyway because
his parents are counting on him to do his part of the family chores. In the last example,
Karen overcomes an obstacle by
Planning ahead. Instead of giving up on her commitment and hoping that she can use
another student’s supplies, she has done everything in her power to make sure that she
sticks with her promise.
GENERALIZATION:
What is Generalization?
The ability to take information, rules, and strategies learned about one situation and
apply it appropriately to other, similar situations.
It can also be defined as “transfer of a response learned to one stimulus to a similar
stimulus”
More in Generalization:
After an animal has learned a conditioned response to one stimulus, it may also respond
to similar stimuli without further training. If a child is bitten by a large black dog, the
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4. child may fear not only that dog, but other large dogs. This phenomenon is called
generalization. Less similar stimuli will usually produce less generalization. For example,
the child may show little fear of smaller dogs.
Here comes the concept of conditioning which is of two types.
1. Classical Conditioning
2. Operant Conditioning
Classical Conditioning:
It’s the form of learning in which a reflexive
or automatic response transfers from one
stimulus to another. For instance, a person
who has had painful experiences at the
dentist’s office may become afraid at just
the sight of the dentist’s office building.
Fear, a natural reaction to a painful
stimulus, has shifted to a different stimulus,
the view of a building. Most psychologists
accept as true that classical conditioning
take place when a person shapes a mental relationship between two
stimuli, so that encountering one stimulus makes the person think of
the other. People are inclined to form these mental relations between
measures or stimuli that occur strongly together in space or time.
Operant Conditioning:
One of the most widespread and important types of learning is operant conditioning,
which involves increasing a behavior by following it with a reward, or decreasing a
behavior by following it with punishment. For example, if a mother starts giving a boy
his favorite snack every day that he cleans up his room, before long the boy may spend
some time each day cleaning his room in anticipation of the snack. In this example, the
boy’s room-cleaning behavior increases because it is followed by a reward or reinforce.
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5. THIS PICTURE IS TAKEN FROM AN EXPERIMENT. IT IS NOT THE PART OF THE CURRENT
TOPIC BUT JUST TO SHOW SOMETHING OUT OF IT.
Unlike classical conditioning, in which the conditioned and unconditioned stimuli are
presented regardless of what the learner does, operant conditioning requires action on
the part of the learner. The boy in the above example will not get his snack unless he
first cleans up his room. The term operant conditioning refers to the fact that the
learner must operate, or perform a certain behavior, before receiving a reward or
punishment.
EXPERIMENTATION:
What is Experimentation?
It is the process of testing a hypothesis by collecting data under controlled, repeatable
conditions.
We can also describe the same thing as “A method of research which permits the
inference of cause and effect. At least two groups of subjects are treated exactly alike in
all ways except one, the independent variable. Differences in the behavior of the
Experimental and Control group which cannot be accounted for by experimental error
are then attributed to the effect of the experimental treatment.”
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6. What is more in Experimentation?
To learn more about experimentation, we need to study Milgram Experiment. It gives us
the more accurate information about the experimentation.
For example, it is through experiments that we know that drinking alcohol causes
slower reaction times. The experimenter can give a set amount of alcohol to a group of
participants, then measure their reaction times. If their time slows down after drinking
the alcohol, we know the alcohol caused that effect.
Milgram Experiment:
During the 1960s, American psychologist Stanley Milgram studied a form of social
influence stronger than conformity: obedience to
authority. In a famous series of experiments that
attracted controversy about human research ethics,
Milgram put each of 1,000 subjects into a situation in
which they were ordered by an experimenter to
administer painful electric shocks to a confederate
(who did not actually receive any shocks). The subjects
in these studies were led to believe that they were
acting as 'teachers' in a study of the effects of
punishment on learning. Each time the 'learner' made
a mistake on a memory test, the subject was supposed
to deliver a shock. The intensity of the shocks was to
increase, beginning at 15 volts and continuing in 15-
volt increments to 450 volts. In most situations, the
subjects could not actually see the learner, but they
could hear an audio taped response that sounded
increasingly serious with each successive shock. The
learner's protests would begin with grunts of pain,
progress to shouting and sometimes even complaints of heart trouble, and eventually
turn to agonized screams of “Let me out of here!” After the teacher passed the 330-volt
level, the learner would fall silent and give no further responses. Yet at each step, an
experimenter ordered the subject to raise the level of shock to the learner.
Many of the subjects in the experiment felt extreme anguish over the pain they thought
they were inflicting. They sweated, trembled, bit their lips, or broke into fits of nervous
laughter. Despite their distress, an astonishing 65 percent of subjects in Milgram's initial
study delivered the final punishment of 450 volts. Other social psychologists conducting
similar experiments later observed comparable levels of obedience among men and
women all over the world. Apparently, many otherwise decent people will cause intense
suffering to others rather than disobey authority.
Milgram designed this experiment in order to understand the obedience of Nazi soldiers
and officials in killing millions of Jews and others during World War II. When interviewed
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7. after the experiment, many of Milgram’s subjects said that they had obeyed largely
because they thought the experimenter would bear responsibility for any harm to the
learner. Similarly, Nazi death camp administrator Adolph Eichmann, when tried for
murdering thousands of innocent people, attributed his behavior to the fact that he was
merely following the orders of his superiors.
ependent Variable:
A dependent variable is what you measure in the experiment and what is affected
during the experiment. The dependent variable responds to the independent variable. It
is called dependent because it quot;dependsquot; on the independent variable. In a scientific
experiment, you cannot have a dependent variable without an independent variable.
Example: You are interested in how stress affects heart rate in humans. Your
independent variable would be the stress and the dependent variable would be the heart
rate. You can directly manipulate stress levels in your human subjects and measure how
those stress levels change heart rate.
Independent Variable:
An independent variable is the variable you have control over, what you can choose and
manipulate. It is usually what you think will affect the dependent variable. In some
cases, you may not be able to manipulate the independent variable. It may be
something that is already there and is fixed, something you would like to evaluate with
respect to how it affects something else, the dependent variable like color, kind, time.
Example: You are interested in how stress affects heart rate in humans. Your
independent variable would be the stress and the dependent variable would be the heart
rate. You can directly manipulate stress levels in your human subjects and measure how
those stress levels change heart rate.
STANDARDIZATION:
What is Standardization?
It can be defined in simple words as the process of formulating, issuing and
implementing standards.
What’s more in Standardization?
The questions arises that how much standardization is important in testing process?
Steadiness and objectivity of how tests are managed and scored. With the aim of
evaluating one person to another on a test, it’s very essential that they must take the
test under the same situation and the same scoring course of action is applied to both.
For example, suppose one person took a English test in a heavy shower and the other
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8. in a silent proof room. Based on the test scores, can we guess who can be the good in
English? Or it is good to say, that heavy shower confused the person? Let us more talk
about it that we applied different scoring criteria to each of the test takers. Could we
still say who was fine in English? This is way standardization is so important in testing.
CORRELATION:
What is Correlation?
A measure of linear association between two (ordered) lists where two variables can be
strongly correlated without having any causal relationship and two variables can have a
causal relationship and yet be uncorrelated.
There are two types of Correlation.
1. Positive Correlation
2. Negative Correlation
Positive Correlation:
In positive correlation, if one factor is increasing, then other factor related to the first
would also be increasing and vice versa.
In other words, we can take positive correlation as Positive correlation indicates that
both variables increase or decrease together, whereas negative correlation indicates
that as one variable increases, so the other decreases, and vice versa.
We can understand it by very simple examples.
Example:
According to psychological term, when illness increases depression increases. When
illness decreases, depression decreases.
The above example can also be demonstrated by the image given below.
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9. Negative Correlation:
In a negative correlation, as the values of one of the variables increase, the values of
the second variable decrease. Likewise, as the value of one of the variables decreases,
the value of the other variable increases.
Here are some other examples of negative correlations:
1. Education and years in jail—people who have more years of education tend to
have fewer years in jail (or phrased as people with more years in jail tend to have
fewer years of education)
2. There is a negative correlation between TV viewing and class grades—students
who spend more time watching TV tend to have lower grades (or phrased as
students with higher grades tend to spend less time watching TV).
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