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William Molnar

Distinguish the concept “reliability” from the concept “validity,” using your own words or
examples. (Please use these terms in their research sense, not their everyday meaning. That is,
not personal reliability, but statistical reliability, and validity not in the sense of a valid password
or a logically valid argument, but as explained in the Trochim textbook.)

Reliability concerns the extent to which any measuring procedure yields the same results on
repeated trials. The more consistent the results achieved by the same participants in the same
repeated measurements, the higher the reliability of the measuring procedure; conversely the less
consistent the results, the lower the reliability An assessment instrument, for example, is quite
reliable if an individual obtains approximately the same score or outcome on repeated
examinations. Reliability is an important indicator of an instrument’s readability,
understandability, and general usefulness

Validity on the other hand is in a general sense, any measuring device that is valid if it does what
it is
intended to do. More specifically, validty concerns the crucial relationship between
concept and indicator. Unlike reliability that focuses on the performance of empirical
measures,validity is usually more of a theoretically-oriented issue because it raises the question,
“valid for what purpose?” Validity is crucial to an instrument’s
credibility; it is an indication that the instrument is indeed measuring what it was
designed to measure and that it is measuring it accurately.
Validity, like reliability, is a matter of degree. Attaining a perfectly valid
indicator—one that represents the intended, and only the intended, concept—is
unachievable. However, the higher an instrument’s validity the higher the likelihood that
it is measuring the theoretical constructs for which it is expressly designed.

2. Provide an example of either weak reliability or weak validity.

Here is an example of a weak validity. Many recreational activities of high school students
involve driving cars. A researcher, wanting to measure whether recreational activities have a
negative effect on grade point average in high school students, might conduct a survey asking
how many students drive to school and then attempt to find a correlation between these two
factors. Because many students might use their cars for purposes other than or in addition to
recreation (e.g., driving to work after school, driving to school rather than walking or taking a
bus), this research study might prove invalid. Even if a strong correlation was found between
driving and grade point average, driving to school in and of itself would seem to be an invalid
measure of recreational activity.
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William Molnar

3. Describe the relationship between reliability and validity

When using reliability and validity, the following four results can occur:

1) High reliability, but low validity — the indicators measure something consistently but
not the intended concept;
2) High validity, but low reliability — the indicator represents the concept well but does
not produce consistent measurements;
3) Low validity and low reliability — the worst case; the indicators neither measure the
concept nor produce consistent results of whatever they measure; or
4) High validity and high reliability — what we hope for; the indicators consistently
measure what they were intended to measure.

When poor validity or reliability results occur, a researcher has to seek the source of
error, revise the measuring instrument as appropriate, and test again for validity and
reliability.