Define reliability and describe three methods for estimating the reliability of a psychological test and its scores.
What will be an ideal response?
• Reliability is a term used to describe the consistency of test scores.
• Test retest—a test developer gives the same test to the same group of test takers on two different occasions. The scores from the first and second administrations are then compared using correlation.
• Alternate forms—giving two forms of the same test—designed to be as much alike as possible—to the same people on two different testing occasions. The resulting scores are correlated to estimate reliability.
• Internal consistency—Internal consistency is a measure of how related the items (or groups of items) on the test are to one another. The methods that are used are split halves, coefficient alpha, and KR-20. Split half divides a test into two equivalent parts, the scores on which are then correlated to estimate the reliability. Internal consistency methods only require a single test administration to compute.
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The newer (second-generation) antipsychotic drugs affect various dopamine receptors as well as other neurotransmitter systems such as
a. melanin. b. neurontin. c. endorphins. d. serotonin.
Bethany starts working as a nurse on the night shift, and therefore, must change her normal sleeping patterns to accommodate her job. As a result, she has trouble sleeping. What would be the likely diagnosis?
a. parasomnia b. circadian rhythm sleep disorder c. sleep inertia d. hypersomnolence disorder
A Type I error made in a hypothesis test when the researcher fails to reject the null hypothesis when it is actually false.
Answer the following statement true (T) or false (F)
In a within-subjects design:
a. each participant serves as his or her own control. b. participants receive only one level of the independent variable. c. between-group variance does not equal error variance at the start of an experiment. d. groups are not equated at the start of the experiment.