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Reliability and Validity Essay

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Reliability and Validity are important aspects of research in the human services field. Without reliability and validity researchers results would be useless. This paper will define the types of reliability and validity and give examples of each. Examples of a data collection method and data collection instruments used in human services and managerial research will be given. This paper will look into why it is important to ensure that these data collection methods and instruments are both reliable and valid.
Reliability is the consistency of your measurement, or the degree to which an instrument ensures the same way each time it is used under the same condition with the same subjects. In short, it is the repeatability of a measurement. A …show more content…

Consider an aptitude test that is designed to predict whether applicants to law school will succeed if admitted. We would be interested in the test’s criterion validity, as it would tell us how well scores on the test are correlated with the particular criterion of success used to assess it. We would also be interested in the test’s construct validity, as it provides insurance that we are measuring the concept
(or construct) in question. There are other uses of validity that are of interest to us as well, such as the test’s content validity, or how adequately it has sampled the universe of content it purports to measure. The concept of validity also has several different uses in research design, and in the following chapters we will examine specific experimental and no experimental designs and how well each fulfills its function.
There are eight types of validity and they are the following:
Construct validity: The degree to which the conceptualization of what is being measured or experimentally manipulated is what is claimed, such as the constructs that are measured by psychological tests or that serves as a link between independent and dependent variables.
Content validity: The adequate sampling of the relevant material or content that a test purports to measure.
Convergent and discriminant validity: The grounds established for a construct based on the convergence of related tests or behavior (convergent validity) and the

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