19  Explore, apply, reflect

🏢 Lab class

Ethics activity

Please download the ethics activity document to see the instructions for the activity.


You can use the BPS Code of Human Research Ethics to help you identify ethical issues with the scenarios described in the ethics activity document.

The following document is password-protected. We will tell you the password in the lab class.

🏠 Self-study

Good measurement

We would like you to think a bit more about what makes a measure a good one, and how reliability and validity relate to good measurement. For this reason, we would like you to complete the activities below, which are taken from Chapter 5 of Beth’s book. They are formative and will not contribute to your overall module mark. You can complete the activities on your own, in a pair or in a small group.

Activity 1

Educational psychologists use teacher ratings of classroom shyness (on a nine-point scale, where 1 = “not at all shy in class” and 9 = “very shy in class”) to measure children’s temperament. Indicate which kinds of reliability would need to be evaluated. Then, draw a scatterplot indicating that the measure has good reliability and another one indicating the measure has poor reliability.

Activity 2

Consider how you might validate the nine-point classroom shyness rating scale.

  • First, what behaviours might be relevant for establishing this rating’s criterion validity? Draw a scatterplot showing the results of a study in which the classroom shyness rating has good criterion validity.
  • Second, come up with ways to evaluate the convergent and discriminant validity of this rating system. What traits should correlate strongly with shyness? What traits should correlate only weakly or not at all? Explain why you chose those traits. Draw a scatterplot showing good convergent validity and a scatterplot showing good discriminant validity.

Feedback

In a previous year, students submitted their answers to these activities on Moodle, and the feedback below is based on their submissions. Please complete the activities before downloading the feedback—you’ll learn much more that way!