Ch19 Measuring Intended Outcomes Exam Questions

CHAPTER 19: The Dependent Variable: Skillfully Measuring Intended Outcomes

True/False Questions

1. It is important that the dependent variables be designed to reflect the construct designated as the effect or outcome of the independent variable.

2. For a study to be informative, scores on the dependent measure need to be similar among the study's participants.

3. In the context of using raters for obtaining assessments, interrater agreement is both necessary and sufficient for reliable assessments.

4. The validity of a study is concerned with whether the construct being measured is the construct of interest.

5. No one variable can adequately operationalize a construct because some of the variance in that variable is due to other constructs and some is due to error.

6. Mood transitioning is a general tendency to evaluate oneself negatively on all dimensions.

7. Method variance appears in counseling research when various aspects of counseling are rated from different perspectives.

8. To indicate how a participant functions normally, an assessment process should affect the characteristics of the participant directly.

9. In the context of procedural considerations of designing the dependent variable, the order of the administration of instruments can have an effect on the responses obtained.

10. Self-reports can be biased by a number of factors, whereas measures of physiological responses can be made directly and are often presumed to be free of bias.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. The purpose of the dependent variable is to:

1. measure the construct that is hypothesized to be the effect.
2. represent the cause of the independent variable accurately.
3. establish a relationship between manipulated and status variables.
4. operationalize the independent variable.

2. In the context of measuring a construct, the degree to which obtained scores reflect the true scores for individuals is called the _____ of the scores.

1. saliency
2. reflexivity
3. reliability
4. dependency

3. For a variable X, a reliability coefficient of r_xx that equals .75 indicates that _____ of the variance in the scores is due to true differences in the level of the characteristic of interest, and that _____ is due to other factors.

1. 75%; 25%
2. 25%; 75%
3. 75%; 75%
4. 50%; 25%

4. Which of the following is true of reliability?

1. The reliability of a measure suggests that the measure is reliable with all participants.
2. The reliability of scores indicates what the true scores are measuring.
3. The reliability of scores is based on the accuracy of the measuring instrument.
4. The reliability properties of scores are associated with observations in a given study.

5. In the context of calculating estimates of reliability, _____ is a metric based on the average interitem correlations and the number of items on the measure.

1. the test-retest correlate
2. split-half reliability coefficient
3. coefficient alpha
4. the transient effect correlate

6. Discriminant validity is said to exist when:

1. significant correlations exist between instruments that measure the same construct.
2. correlations cannot be made between instruments that measure the same construct.
3. the correlations of measures of different constructs are smaller than correlations of measures of the same construct.
4. the correlations of measures of different constructs are larger than correlations of measures of the same construct.

7. Which of the following is mentioned under the heading "Reliability estimates" in the Methods section of a thesis?

1. Factors and their definitions
2. Key references
3. Cronbach's alpha coefficients
4. Examples of sample items

8. A key disadvantage of self-reports is that they are _____.

1. vulnerable to distortions by participants
2. incompatible with phenomenological views of counseling
3. relatively difficult to administer to participants
4. incapable of assessing private cognitions and feelings

9. In the context of the methods of data collection, the rationale behind projective techniques is that:

1. human interaction provides an added advantage while evaluating participant responses.
2. participants' responses to ambiguous stimuli will reveal some facet of their personality.
3. respondents rate characteristics of participants or events of interest.
4. participants assess the degree to which some characteristic is present.

10. In which of the following methods of data collection are participants unaware of the assessment procedure, thus eliminating reactivity?

1. Self-reports
2. Personal interviews
3. Unobtrusive measures
4. Behavioral observations