| accuracy | Agreement of a measurement with a known standard.
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| behavioral measure | A measure of a subject's activity in a situation; for example, the number of times a rat presses a lever (frequency of responding).
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| concurrent validity | The validity of a test established by showing that its results can be used to infer an individual's value on some other, accepted test administered at the same time.
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| construct validity | Validity that applies when a test is designed to measure a "construct" or variable "constructed" to describe or explain behavior on the basis of theory (e.g., intelligence). A test has construct validity if the measured values of the construct predict behavior as expected from the theory (e.g., those with higher intelligence scores achieve higher grades in school).
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| content validity | Validity of a test established by judging how adequately the test samples behavior representative of the universe of behaviors the test was designed to sample.
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| criterion-related validity | The ability of a measure to produce results similar to those provided by other, established measures of the same variable.
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| demand characteristics | Cues inadvertently provided by the researcher or research context concerning the purposes of a study or the behavior expected from participants.
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| double-blind technique | Neither the participants in a study nor the person carrying out the study knows at the time of testing which treatment the participant is receiving.
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| expectancy effect | When a researcher's preconceived ideas about how subjects should behave are subtly communicated to subjects and, in turn, affect the subjects' behavior.
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| experimenter bias | When the behavior of the researcher influences the results of a study. Experimenter bias stems from two sources: expectancy effects and uneven treatment of subjects across treatments.
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| face validity | How well a test appears to measure (judging by its contents) what it was designed to measure. Example: A measure of mathematical ability would have face validity if it contained math problems.
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| Implicit Association Test (IAT) | A popular measure of implicit attitudes that uses responses that are not under direct conscious control.
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| interval scale | A measurement scale in which the spacing between values along the scale is known. The zero point of an interval scale is arbitrary.
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| manipulation check | Measures included in an experiment to test the effectiveness of the independent variables.
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| nominal scale | A measurement scale that involves categorizing cases into two or more distinct categories. This scale yields the least information.
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| ordinal scale | A measurement scale in which cases are ordered along some dimension (e.g., large, medium, or small). The distances between scale values are unknown.
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| parallel-forms reliability | Establishing the reliability of a questionnaire by administering parallel (alternate) forms of the questionnaire repeatedly.
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| physiological measure | A measure of a bodily function of subjects in a study (e.g., heart rate).
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| pilot study | A small, scaled-down version of a study used to test the validity of experimental procedures and measures.
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| predictive validity | The ability of a measure to predict some future behavior.
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| Q-sort methodology | A qualitative measurement technique that involves establishing evaluative categories and sorting items into those categories.
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| range effects | A problem in which a variable being observed reaches an upper limit (ceiling effect) or lower limit (floor effect).
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| ratio scale | Highest scale of measurement; it has all of the characteristics of an interval scale plus an absolute zero point.
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| reliability | Whether a measure or questionnaire produces the same or similar responses with multiple administrations of the same or similar instrument.
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| role attitude cue | An unintended cue in an experiment that suggests to the participants how they are expected to behave.
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| self-report measure | A measure that requires participants to report on their past, present, or future behavior.
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| single-blind technique | The person testing subjects in a study is kept unaware of the hypotheses being tested.
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| split-half reliability | A method of assessing reliability of a questionnaire using a single administration of the instrument. The questionnaire is split into two parts, and responses from the two parts are correlated.
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| test–retest reliability | A method of assessing the reliability of a questionnaire by administering repeatedly the same or parallel form of a test.
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| validity | The extent to which a measuring instrument measures what it was designed to measure.
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