VALIDITY AND RELIABILITY

Ayaz Muhammad Khan

CONTENT
Importance of valid instrument What is validity? Types of validity evidence What is reliability? Difference between validity Types of reliability Measurement error

IMPORTANCE OF VALID INSTRUMENT

Quality of instrument use in research is very important and to ensure the data that researcher collect is valid and reliable or not. Validity is the extent to which to a test measures what we actually wish to measure. Reliability has to do with the accuracy and precision of a measurement procedure. Practicality is concerned with a range of factors of economy convenience and interpretability The characteristics of good measurement

VALIDITY Defined as referring to the appropriateness, correctness, meaningfulness, and usefulness of specific inference researcher make based on data they collect. Validation is the process of collecting and analyzing evidence to support such inference.

TYPES OF VALIDITY EVIDENCE

Content-related evidence of validity= refer to the content and format of the instrument. It must be consistent with definition of variable and sample of subject to measured. Criterion related evidence of validity= refer to the relationship between scores obtained using the instrument and scores obtained using one or more other instrument. Construct-related evidence of validity= refer to the nature of the psychological construct or characteristic being measured by instrument.

TYPES OF VALIDITY

Face validity: Face validity simply means the validity at face value. As a check on face validity, test/survey items are sent to teachers to obtain suggestions for modification. Because of its vagueness and subjectivity, psychometricians have abandoned this concept for a long time.

CONTENT VALIDITY
Checking to make sure that you have picked questions that cover the areas you want to cover, thoroughly and well. Difficulties: important to ensure that all major aspect that cover by test item and in the correct proportion.

CONSTRUCT VALIDITY
Construct validity defines how well a test or experiment measures up to its claims. Convergent validity and discriminate validity are commonly regarded as subsets of construct validity. Convergent validity tests that constructs that are expected to be related are, in fact, related. Discriminate validity (or divergent validity) tests that constructs that should have no relationship do, in fact, not have any relationship.

CRITERION VALIDITY
Criterion validity assesses whether a test reflects a certain set of abilities. Concurrent validity measures the test against a benchmark test and high correlation indicates that the test has strong criterion validity. Predictive validity is a measure of how well a test predicts abilities. It involves testing a group of subjects for a certain construct and then comparing them with results obtained at some point in the future.

THREATS TO VALIDITY
Inappropriate selection of constructs or measures. Insufficient data collected to make valid conclusions. Too great a variation in data (can't see the wood for the trees). Inadequate selection of target subjects. Complex interaction across constructs. Subjects giving biased answers or trying to guess what they should say. Experimental method not valid. Operation of experiment not rigorous.

RELIABILITY
Reliability is the consistency of your measurement, or the degree to which an instrument measures the same way each time it is used under the same condition with the same subjects. In short, it is the repeatability of your measurement. Example: A measure is considered reliable if a person's score on the same test given twice is similar. It is important to remember that reliability is not measured, it is estimated.

VALIDITY VS. RELIABILITY

Reliable but not valid

Valid and reliable

ERROR OF MEASUREMENT

Error of measurement refer to variation in scores obtained by the same individuals on the same instrument.

TEST-RETEST

Test/retest reliability is evaluated by giving the same set of questions on two different occasions. If the results are consistent, then the measure is said to be reliable.

a class of children are given several tests that are intended to assess the same abilities. A week and a month later, they are given the same tests. With allowances for learning, the variation in the test and retest results are used to assess which tests have better test-retest reliability.

EQUIVALENT FORMS METHOD

When equivalent form method is used, two different but equivalent forms of an instrument are administered to the same group of individual during the same time period.

INTERNAL-CONSISTENCY METHODS

The several internal consistency method of estimating reliability are:

Split half procedure

KUDER-RICHARDSON APPROACH
Most frequently employed method to determined the internal consistency. Alpha coefficient: one split-half reliability and then randomly divide the items into another set of split halves and recomputed, and keep doing this until we have computed all possible split half estimates of reliability. Cronbach's Alpha is mathematically equivalent to the average of all possible split-half estimates, although that's not how we compute it. Limitation: not use full for heterogeneous test.

STANDARD ERROR OF MEASUREMENT

It shows the index the extend to which a measurement vary under changed circumstance. For example it will be smaller if it include only error due to different content (internal consistency or equivalent) or passage of time (test retest)