KMBN203 BRM PRAGYA CHAUHAN

Session 2021-22
 UNIT-3
Measurement and Scaling
Techniques

KMBN203 BRM Pragya Chauhan

Session 2021-22
 KMBN203 BRM Pragya Chauhan
Session 2021-22
 KMBN203 BRM Pragya Chauhan
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 KMBN203 BRM Pragya Chauhan
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 KMBN203 BRM Pragya Chauhan
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 KMBN203 BRM Pragya Chauhan
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 KMBN203 BRM Pragya Chauhan
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 KMBN203 BRM Pragya Chauhan
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 KMBN203 BRM Pragya Chauhan
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 KMBN203 BRM Pragya Chauhan
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 KMBN203 BRM Pragya Chauhan
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 Problems in Measurement in
Management Research

RELIABILITY
Reliability refers to the consistency of a measure. Psychologists
consider three types of consistency: over time (test-retest
reliability), across items (internal consistency), and across
different researchers (inter-rater reliability).

KMBN203 BRM Pragya Chauhan

Session 2021-22
 Test-Retest Reliability
When researchers measure a construct that they assume to be consistent
across time, then the scores they obtain should also be consistent across
time. Test-retest reliability is the extent to which this is actually the case.
For example, intelligence is generally thought to be consistent across
time. A person who is highly intelligent today will be highly intelligent
next week. This means that any good measure of intelligence should
produce roughly the same scores for this individual next week as it does
today. Clearly, a measure that produces highly inconsistent scores over
time cannot be a very good measure of a construct that is supposed to be
consistent.
KMBN203 BRM Pragya Chauhan
Session 2021-22
 Internal Consistency
Another kind of reliability is internal consistency, which is the
consistency of people’s responses across the items on a multiple-item
measure. In general, all the items on such measures are supposed to
reflect the same underlying construct, so people’s scores on those items
should be correlated with each other. On the Rosenberg Self-Esteem
Scale, people who agree that they are a person of worth should tend to
agree that they have a number of good qualities. If people’s responses to
the different items are not correlated with each other, then it would no
longer make sense to claim that they are all measuring the same
underlying construct.
KMBN203 BRM Pragya Chauhan
Session 2021-22
 Interrater Reliability
Many behavioral measures involve significant judgment on the part of an observer or
a rater. Inter-rater reliability is the extent to which different observers are consistent
in their judgments. For example, if you were interested in measuring university
students’ social skills, you could make video recordings of them as they interacted with
another student whom they are meeting for the first time. Then you could have two or
more observers watch the videos and rate each student’s level of social skills. To the
extent that each participant does, in fact, have some level of social skills that can be
detected by an attentive observer, different observers’ ratings should be highly
correlated with each other. Inter-rater reliability would also have been measured in
Bandura’s Bobo doll study. In this case, the observers’ ratings of how many acts of
aggression a particular child committed while playing with the Bobo doll should have
been highly positively correlated.
KMBN203 BRM Pragya Chauhan
Session 2021-22
 VALIDITY
Validity is the extent to which the scores from a measure represent the variable they
are intended to. But how do researchers make this judgment? We have already
considered one factor that they take into account—reliability. When a measure has
good test-retest reliability and internal consistency, researchers should be more
confident that the scores represent what they are supposed to. There has to be more
to it, however, because a measure can be extremely reliable but have no validity
whatsoever. As an absurd example, imagine someone who believes that people’s
index finger length reflects their self-esteem and therefore tries to measure self-
esteem by holding a ruler up to people’s index fingers. Although this measure would
have extremely good test-retest reliability, it would have absolutely no validity. The
fact that one person’s index finger is a centimeter longer than another’s would
indicate nothing about which one had higher self-esteem.
KMBN203 BRM Pragya Chauhan
Session 2021-22
 Face Validity
Face validity is the extent to which a measurement method appears “on
its face” to measure the construct of interest. Most people would expect
a self-esteem questionnaire to include items about whether they see
themselves as a person of worth and whether they think they have good
qualities. So a questionnaire that included these kinds of items would
have good face validity. The finger-length method of measuring self-
esteem, on the other hand, seems to have nothing to do with self-
esteem and therefore has poor face validity. Although face validity can be
assessed quantitatively—for example, by having a large sample of people
rate a measure in terms of whether it appears to measure what it is
intended to—it is usually assessed informally.
KMBN203 BRM Pragya Chauhan
Session 2021-22
 Content Validity
Content validity is the extent to which a measure “covers” the construct of interest.
For example, if a researcher conceptually defines test anxiety as involving both
sympathetic nervous system activation (leading to nervous feelings) and negative
thoughts, then his measure of test anxiety should include items about both nervous
feelings and negative thoughts. Or consider that attitudes are usually defined as
involving thoughts, feelings, and actions toward something. By this conceptual
definition, a person has a positive attitude toward exercise to the extent that he or
she thinks positive thoughts about exercising, feels good about exercising, and
actually exercises. So to have good content validity, a measure of people’s attitudes
toward exercise would have to reflect all three of these aspects. Like face validity,
content validity is not usually assessed quantitatively. Instead, it is assessed by
carefully checking the measurement method against the conceptual definition of
the construct.
KMBN203 BRM Pragya Chauhan
Session 2021-22
 Criterion Validity
Criterion validity is the extent to which people’s scores on a measure are
correlated with other variables (known as criteria) that one would expect
them to be correlated with. For example, people’s scores on a new measure of
test anxiety should be negatively correlated with their performance on an
important school exam. If it were found that people’s scores were in fact
negatively correlated with their exam performance, then this would be a piece
of evidence that these scores really represent people’s test anxiety. But if it
were found that people scored equally well on the exam regardless of their
test anxiety scores, then this would cast doubt on the validity of the measure.

KMBN203 BRM Pragya Chauhan

Session 2021-22
 Discriminant Validity
Discriminant validity, on the other hand, is the extent to which scores
on a measure are not correlated with measures of variables that are
conceptually distinct. For example, self-esteem is a general attitude
toward the self that is fairly stable over time. It is not the same as
mood, which is how good or bad one happens to be feeling right now.
So people’s scores on a new measure of self-esteem should not be very
highly correlated with their moods. If the new measure of self-esteem
were highly correlated with a measure of mood, it could be argued that
the new measure is not really measuring self-esteem; it is measuring
mood instead.
KMBN203 BRM Pragya Chauhan
Session 2021-22
 KMBN203 BRM Pragya Chauhan
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 KMBN203 BRM Pragya Chauhan
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 KMBN203 BRM Pragya Chauhan
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 KMBN203 BRM Pragya Chauhan
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 KMBN203 BRM Pragya Chauhan
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 KMBN203 BRM Pragya Chauhan
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 KMBN203 BRM Pragya Chauhan
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 KMBN203 BRM Pragya Chauhan
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 KMBN203 BRM Pragya Chauhan
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 KMBN203 BRM Pragya Chauhan
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 KMBN203 BRM Pragya Chauhan
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 KMBN203 BRM Pragya Chauhan
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 KMBN203 BRM Pragya Chauhan
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 KMBN203 BRM Pragya Chauhan
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 KMBN203 BRM Pragya Chauhan
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 KMBN203 BRM Pragya Chauhan
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 KMBN203 BRM Pragya Chauhan
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 KMBN203 BRM Pragya Chauhan
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 KMBN203 BRM Pragya Chauhan
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 KMBN203 BRM Pragya Chauhan
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 KMBN203 BRM Pragya Chauhan
Session 2021-22
 KMBN203 BRM Pragya Chauhan
Session 2021-22
 KMBN203 BRM Pragya Chauhan
Session 2021-22
 THANK YOU!

KMBN203 BRM Pragya Chauhan

Session 2021-22