PSYB01H3 Chapter Notes - Chapter 5: Operational Definition, Internal Consistency, Toyota Electronic Modulated Suspension
Document Summary
Reliability refers to the consistency or stability of a measure of behaviour. A more formal way of understanding reliability is to use the concepts of true score and measurement error. Any measure that you make can be thought of as comprising two components: a true score, which is the real score on the variable, measurement error. An unreliable measure of intelligence contains considerable measurement error and so does not provide an accurate indication of an individual"s true intelligence. In contrast, a reliable measure of intelligence one that contains little measurement error. Will yield an identical (or nearly identical) intelligence score each time the same individual is measured. The measurement error in the unreliable test is revealed in the greater variability shown by the person who took the unreliable test. Reliability is most likely to be achieved when researchers use careful measurement procedures. A correlation coefficient is a number that tells us how strongly two variables are related to each other.
