Research Skills for Psychology Majors: Everything You Need to Know to Get Started

Reliability

R
eliability and validity, the topics of this and the next chapter, are twins and
cannot be completely separated. These two concepts comprise the dual
“holy grail” of research, and outside of the central importance of theory,
they are crucial to any sort of meaningful research. Without reliability and validity,
research is nonsense. Many forms of reliability and of validity have been identified,
perhaps to the point that the words themselves have been stretched thin.

Reliability refers to consistency of measurement and takes several forms: whether

a construct is measured in a manner that is stable over time; are the items in a test
congruent with each other; are two supposedly identical tests really the same; are
people performing ratings that agree with each other. Validity is a deeper concept:
does the instrument measure the right construct; is the experiment constructed
so that the independent variable actually represents the theoretical construct; is it
really the independent variable that caused changes in the dependent variable; and
more.

Four kinds of reliability are usually identified in behavioral research: test-retest,

parallel forms, internal consistency, and inter-rater.

Test-Retest Reliability

A good test (or “instrument”) is stable over repeated administrations. An IQ

test given to the same person three times in one month should reveal the same
IQ score, more or less, each time. Likewise, any adequate measure of personal-
ity, attitudes, skills, values, or beliefs should come out the same, time after time,
unless the person him or herself actually changes in either a short-term or long-
term sense. Some degree of variability is expected due to temporary changes in
the person, the situation, or just plain random factors like luck, but in general the
scores should be consistent.

The test-retest reliability of a measure is estimated using a reliability coefficient.

A reliability coefficient is often a correlation coefficient calculated between the
administrations of the test. (Correlation coefficients are described in the SPSS-Ba-
sic Analyses chapter. See sidebar for a quick explanation of correlations.) A typical
research study of test-retest reliability would administer a test to a sample of 100
people, wait a month, then readminister it to the same people. The correlation
between the two administrations is an indicator of the instrument’s reliability.

©2003 W. K. Gabrenya Jr. Version: 1.0

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Parallel Forms Reliability

Correlation Coefficient
“Forms” are alternate versions of the same test. We use Correlation refers to the relationship or association
the terms “Form A” and “Form B” sometimes to identify between two variables within a sample. For exam-
such versions of a test. Parallel forms are forms that really ple, we would expect to find a correlation between
do measure the same thing, that is, are equivalent. Paral- height and weight in a sample of people: generally,
lel forms of a test are developed to be used in situations taller people weigh more. The relationship can
where we must obtain essentially the same information range from very strong to nonexistent. Height and
from people at several different but close-together times weight show a fairly strong relationship, although of
and we don’t want their exposure to the test at one time course there are exceptions such as tall thin people
and short wide people. On the other hand, weight
to affect their responses other times. This “carry over” ef-
and IQ show no relationship. Sometimes, as one
fect can occur due to practice (on a skills-oriented test) or variable (height) increases, another variable (weight)
remembering the items from a previous administration. also increases, evidencing a “positive relationship.”
Other times, we see a negative relationship, such as
For example, the author’s research on international stu- between smoking cigarettes (packs per week) and
dent adjustment required obtaining psychological adjust- life expectancy (years). All of these relationships are
ment measures from students every week for 10 weeks. examined within groups of people and refer to the
At some point, it was expected that the students would general trend present in the group, not to individu-
stop thinking about the test questions and just answer als.
automatically. To try to avoid this, two forms of the ad-
The correlation coefficient is a statistical estimation
justment measure were developed and administered on of the strength of relationship. (A more formal, the-
alternate weeks. oretical explanation of correlation is presented in
the SPSS-Basic Analyses chapter.) Correlation coef-
Parallel forms reliability is measured using the correlation ficients are symbolized by the letter “r” and range
coefficient between the forms. In a typical study, a group from 1 to 0 to -1. At r=0, there is no relationship,
of 100 students would take all forms of the test. The cor- as in weight and IQ. At r=1 there is a perfect posi-
relations among the forms represent the extent of parallel tive relationship: as one variable increases, the other
forms reliability. one increases in perfect lockstep. Such relationships
are rare in the real world. At r=-1, there is a perfect
negative relationship, also rare.
Internal Consistency Reliability
Correlation coefficients range anywhere along
Often it is important that the individual items in a test the scale from 1 to -1. For example, the relation-
measure the same thing, or almost measure the same thing. ship between people’s personality traits and their
If items are not consistent with each other, the overall test behaviors tends to be around r=.30 (not so good).
score will reflect several different underlying constructs The correlation between the SAT-Math and overall
university GPA among psychology undergraduates
and won’t make any sense. For example, a measure of
here is r=.53, a moderately good relationship.
attitudes toward pizza might include several differ qualities
of pizza. These items should be sufficiently similar to each
other so that adding up the item responses produces a
total score that focuses on the intended construct.

1. Pizza tastes good.

Strongly Agree - Somewhat Agree - Neutral - Somewhat Disagree - Strongly Disagree
2. I feel hungry when I think of pizza.
3. Pizza is inexpensive.
4. Pizza is easy to get.
5. Pizza is popular in New York.

Items 1 and 2 would probably have high internal consistency reliability. Items 1, 2,
3, and 4 would probably have moderately high reliability. Item 5 really does not fit
this test and would show little internal consistency reliability with the other items.
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Internal consistency reliability is measured using special types of correlation coef-

ficients termed Cronbach’s Alpha and the Kuder-Richardson Coefficient. When
researchers make new tests and examine aspects of the test such as the internal
consistency reliability of the items, the procedure is termed “item analysis.”

Inter-Rater Reliability

A somewhat different sort of reliability is at issue when the same stimulus (per-
son, event, behavior, etc.) must be rated by more than one rater. For example, in
studies of the relationship between physical attractiveness and social development,
the researchers need to know how attractive the person is. (Research of this kind
asks questions such as, “do prettier people develop better social skills?”) How can
this rating be done? Calculate the ratio of length of nose to distance between the
ears? While some such physical indexes of attractiveness have been developed,
the most common way is to assemble a panel of “judges” to rate the “stimuli.”
(Sounds like figure skating judging, but there is no bribery involved.) The research-
er needs to look at the extent to which the raters agree on their ratings. When
inter-rater reliability is low, the researcher has to wonder if it is possible to classify
persons on a dimension such as attractiveness or whether his or her attempts to
do so have failed.

Inter-rater reliability is measured in several ways, such as the percentage of agree-

ment among the judges or a correlation-like coefficient called Kappa.

A Research Example

Here’s a semi-hypothetical example that brings these reliability issues together. Of

course, a complete example would require considering theory and reliability’s twin,
validity.

The researcher wants to know if personality traits are related to sexual activ-
ity. She cannot perform a true experiment because personality traits cannot be
controlled or manipulated, so she must be content with simply measuring the
traits and assessing sexual behavior. The trait of interest is Self-Monitoring, a blend
of extraversion, willingness to self-present, self-presentation abilities, and low social
anxiety. High Self-Monitors are outgoing people who know how to act in various
situations to get what they want, and do so. A measure of sexual behavior is cre-
ated just for this study, the “Sexual Activity Test” (SAT).

The Self-Monitoring Scale (SMS) already exists, so she will use it as it is. She must,
however, construct the SAT from scratch. The details of how she would actually
do this are complicated, but in the end she has a 20-item test that assesses vari-
ous interpersonal sexual behaviors. The researcher theorizes that, overall, SAT is a
“unitary construct.” A unitary construct has one, central idea or dimension rather
than several sub-dimensions. For example, some psychologists believe that IQ may
not be a unitary construct, arguing that there are several different kinds of intel-
ligence. If true, then a single IQ score is meaningless.

To determine if the SAT assesses a unitary construct, the researcher gives the
initial version of the test to a large sample of people who will not be in the real
study, then performs an item analysis. She looks at the internal consistency reli-
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ability of the 20 items to see if they “hang together.” (She also does some other
things that are beyond our interest here.) Coefficient alpha, a common measure
of internal consistency, turns out to be α=.45. This is too low, indicating that
the items are not measuring the same thing. She has two choices: (1) give up on
the idea that the SAT will assess a unitary construct and try to find the two or
more sub-dimensions that represent interpersonal sexual activity; or (2) find the
bad items and get rid of them. She chooses the latter. A bad item is one that is
poorly related to the other items, sort of like a human who refuses to fit in to
a social group. To find the “bad” items, she correlates each item with the total
score (the average of all the items). These 20 correlations are termed “item-total
correlations.” She looks for items with a poor relationship to the total score and
eliminates them from the SAT. Then she recalculates coefficient alpha on the new,
smaller test and, hooray, it is now α=.85 (very good). As the Japanese say: “the nail
that sticks up gets pounded down.”

Next, she want to make sure that the SAT is stable over time. She finds still
another sample of people and gives them the SAT twice, one month apart. The
correlation between time 1 and time 2, the test-retest reliability, turns out to be
r=.70. This is very good given the fact that people do change over time, and some
instability in the test is expected for this reason rather than due to the test’s quali-
ties.

The researcher wants to do a longitudinal study of Self-Monitoring and sexual

behavior so she can figure out whether these two variables change over time, if
the relationship between them changes over time, and possibly which one causes
the other. A longitudinal study measures the same thing over time. She has some
fear that giving the same tests several times will reduce the quality of her results
because her research subjects will remember the items from administration to
administration and answer automatically without thinking. She needs at least two
versions of each test. To produce these versions, she creates two SMSs by divid-
ing up the items using the item analysis information published some time ago by
the brilliant young psychologists Gabrenya and Arkin (1980). She does the same
for the SAT. To make sure that she has parallel forms, she gives all four tests (two
SMSs and two SATs) to another sample of people and calculates the correlation
between the parallel forms. Because she is such a meticulous researcher and
because the earlier work of Gabrenya and Arkin was so fine, she obtains parallel
forms reliability coefficients that are good, r=.75 for SMS and r=.68 for SAT.

Now, finally, she is ready to perform her research. She selects a sample of 50
males and 50 females in the range 22-25 years old, all unmarried, and administers
her two tests to them four times, once every six months. She gives Form A of
the SMS and Form A of the SAT the first time, Form B the second time, Form A
the third time, etc. Unfortunately, she gets very “noisy” results: the correlations
between SAT and SMS are in the right direction, but low.

She concludes that something else is affecting sexual activity and, based on other
social psychology research, theorizes that it is the physical attractiveness of the
subjects. She must now evaluate each subject’s physical attractiveness. She brings
all 100 into her lab and takes professional quality photos of them from “a variety
of angles.” Then she assembles a panel of two men and two women in the 22-25
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age range and has them rate each photo on attractiveness. To make sure they are
producing a reliable measure, she looks at the agreement rates among the four
raters. Coefficient Kappa comes out to be K=.65, which is good enough. Now
she can use the attractiveness ratings to lower the noise (error variance) in her
data.

How would such a study actually come out? This particular study has not been
performed, but components of it have. Self Monitoring does predict higher sexual
activity, and attractive people do get more dates. Based on other studies, we
would predict that SMS would cause sexual activity, not the opposite. Adding at-
tractiveness would undoubtedly strengthen the results of the study.

Reference

Gabrenya, W. K., Jr., & Arkin, R. M. (1980). Self-Monitoring Scale: Factor structure
and correlates. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 6, 13-22.