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¶ … Reliability and Validity in Psychological Testing
In any kind of academic and professional testing, it is important to obtain at least some degree of reliability and validity. Failing this, the tests cannot be applied for results that are consistent or usable in an academic setting, since they cannot be verified in terms of repeatability or in comparison to other results. In psychology, which is more often than not studied by qualitative rather than quantitative means, it is often difficult to establish reliability and validity, since the specific numbers to do so are lacking. However, there are means to ensure an optimal level of validity and reliability in this kind of testing
Reliability
According to Kline (2013, p. 7), reliability comes in two distinct manifestations: Reliability in terms of consistency over time, and reliability in terms of internal consistency. Overtime, reliability is determined by administering tests to the same individuals on more than one occasion. When the results are the same or similar, the reliability is at a high level. This is also known as an instrument's test-retest reliability. Internal consistency reliability, on the other hand, concerns the relation of the test items to each other. The danger with this type of reliability is that the test items may simply be paraphrases of each other, which negatively affects the validity of the instrument...
13).
The importance of the reliability factor in test instruments is shown in studies such as the one conducted by Narrow et al. (2013). In this document, the level or reliability for several populations were measured when administering test items for the cross-cutting symptom in terms of the DSM-5 measurement document. The authors found the test-retest reliability of instrument items good to excellent. In terms of the populations being interviewed, parents proved to be reliable in terms of reporting symptoms in their children. For child respondents, however, responses were less uniformly reliable, while clinicians were able to rate psychosis reliably but not clinical domains when it comes to psychosis for children or suicide across the age groups.
Validity
The validity of a psychometric test is high when the test is shown to measure what it intended to measure. According to Kline (2013, p. 17), many psychometric tests have surprisingly low validity, which demonstrates the complicated nature of the matter and its measurement. In psychological testing, validity is often difficult to measure because of the fluid nature of the concept of validity; there is no singular measure or statistic against which it can be measured for validity. For those attempting to determine the validity level of a psychometric test, there are various types of validity that can…
References
Kline, P. (2013). Handbook of Psychological Testing. New York: Routledge
Narrow, W.E., Clarke, D.E., Kuramoto, S.J., Kraemer, H.C., Kupfer, D.J., Greiner, L., and Regier, D.A. (2013, Jan.) DSM-5 Field Trials in the United States and Canada, Part III: Development and Reliability Testing of a Cross-Cutting Symptom Assessment for DSM-5. The American Journal of Psychiatry. 170(1).
Raz, S., Bar-Haim, Y., Sadeh, A., and Dan, O. (2014). Reliability and Validity of Online Continuous Performance Test Among Young Adults. Assessment. 21(1).
Salzer, M.S. And Brusilovsky, E. (2014, Apr.). Advancing Recovery Science: Reliability and Validity Properties of the Recovery Assessment Scale. Psychiatric Services. 65(4).
Reliability, validity and norming sample populations play critical roles in the usefulness of assessment instruments used in forensics assessments. These three facets of assessment help to determine whether or not the results the assessment yield is credible. Additionally, they each help to evaluate a particular aspect of an instrument, although there is generally a degree of correlation between these factors. Validity is simply the accuracy of a test to effectively measure
Reliability & Validity For the lay person, the notion of personality is often derived from components of an individual's character or make up that has the ability to elicit positive or negative reactions from other individuals. The person who has a propensity for positive reactions from others is often thought to have a 'good' personality. Conversely, the person who tends to elicit not so favorable reactions from others may be thought
moderate impairment), while dependent variables included the levels of measured performance on the test. Operationalization involved demonstrating the ability to perform the tasks of daily life. Simple cooking was tested by asking the test subject to cook oatmeal; using a telephone was tested by requiring the subject to inquire about grocery delivery on the phone; and the test subject was required to select and administer medications correctly and select
Reliability of Test Reliability is defined by Joppe (2002,p.1) as the level of consistency of the obtained results over a period of time as well as an accurate representation of the population under study. If the outcome of the study can be reproduced using a similar methodology then the instrument used in the research are said to be reliable. It is worth noticing that there is an element of replicability as well
Finally, internal consistency reliability looks at items in the same test, to see if they measure the same construct in the same way (Cherry, 2011, Reliability). However, all of these measures of reliability are useless if a test does not measure what it purports to measure. Validity looks at whether a test measures what it claims to measure. Only valid tests can be used to be accurately applied or interpreted
Reliability a. Dependability means emphasis on the need for researchers to take into consideration, the ever-evolving context within research as it happens (Creswell & Miller, 2000). The responsibility of qualitative research is to describe the changes naturally occurring in the setting as well as how such changes researchers approach the study. To address dependability within a qualitative research study, a person can perform member checking of data interpretation, a pilot test,