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Construct Validity
Construct validity concerns how well a set of indicators represent or reflect a concept that is not directly measurable. ''Construct validation'' is the accumulation of evidence to support the interpretation of what a measure reflects.Polit DF Beck CT (2012). Nursing Research: Generating and Assessing Evidence for Nursing Practice, 9th ed. Philadelphia, USA: Wolters Klower Health, Lippincott Williams & Wilkins Modern validity theory defines construct validity as the overarching concern of validity research, subsuming all other types of validity evidence such as content validity and criterion validity. Construct validity is the appropriateness of inferences made on the basis of observations or measurements (often test scores), specifically whether a test can reasonably be considered to reflect the intended construct. Constructs are abstractions that are deliberately created by researchers in order to conceptualize the latent variable, which is correlated with scores on a given me ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Operationalization
In research design, especially in psychology, social sciences, life sciences and physics, operationalization or operationalisation is a process of defining the measurement of a phenomenon which is not directly measurable, though its existence is inferred from other phenomena. Operationalization thus defines a fuzzy concept so as to make it clearly distinguishable, measurable, and understandable by empirical observation. In a broader sense, it defines the extension of a concept—describing what is and is not an instance of that concept. For example, in medicine, the phenomenon of health might be operationalized by one or more indicators like body mass index or tobacco smoking. As another example, in visual processing the presence of a certain object in the environment could be inferred by measuring specific features of the light it reflects. In these examples, the phenomena are difficult to directly observe and measure because they are general/abstract (as in the example of heal ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lee Cronbach
Lee Joseph Cronbach (April 22, 1916 – October 1, 2001) was an American educational psychologist who made contributions to psychological testing and measurement. At the University of Illinois, Urbana, Cronbach produced many of his works: the "Alpha" paper (Cronbach, 1951), as well as an essay titled "The Two Disciplines of Scientific Psychology", in the ''American Psychologist'' magazine in 1957, where he discussed his thoughts on the increasing divergence between the fields of experimental psychology and correlational psychology (to which he himself belonged). Cronbach was the president of the American Psychological Association, president of the American Educational Research Association, Vida Jacks Professor of Education at Stanford University and a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society. Cronbach is considered to be "one of the most prominent and influential educational psyc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Academic Achievement
Academic achievement or academic performance is the extent to which a student, teacher or institution has attained their short or long-term educational goals. Completion of educational benchmarks such as secondary school diplomas and bachelor's degrees represent academic achievement. Academic achievement is commonly measured through Test (assessment), examinations or continuous assessments but there is no general agreement on how it is best evaluated or which aspects are most important—procedural knowledge such as skills or declarative knowledge such as facts. Furthermore, there are inconclusive results over which individual factors successfully predict academic performance, elements such as test anxiety, environment, motivation, and emotions require consideration when developing models of school achievement. In California, the achievement of schools is measured by the Academic Performance Index (California public schools), Academic Performance Index. Academic achievement is som ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Phrenology
Phrenology is a pseudoscience that involves the measurement of bumps on the skull to predict mental traits. It is based on the concept that the Human brain, brain is the organ of the mind, and that certain brain areas have localized, specific Human brain#Function, functions or modules. It was said that the brain was composed of different muscles, so those that were used more often were bigger, resulting in the different skull shapes. This provided reasoning for the common presence of bumps on the skull in different locations. The brain "muscles" not being used as frequently remained small and were therefore not present on the exterior of the skull. Although both of those ideas have a basis in reality, phrenology generalizes beyond empirical knowledge in a way that departs from science. The central phrenological notion that measuring the contour of the skull can predict personality traits is discredited by empirical research. Developed by Germans, German physician Franz Joseph Ga ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Working Memory
Working memory is a cognitive system with a limited capacity that can Memory, hold information temporarily. It is important for reasoning and the guidance of decision-making and behavior. Working memory is often used synonymously with short-term memory, but some theorists consider the two forms of memory distinct, assuming that working memory allows for the manipulation of stored information, whereas short-term memory only refers to the short-term storage of information. Working memory is a theoretical concept central to cognitive psychology, neuropsychology, and neuroscience. History The term "working memory" was coined by George Armitage Miller, Miller, Eugene Galanter, Galanter, and Karl H. Pribram, Pribram, and was used in the 1960s in the context of Computational theory of mind, theories that likened the mind to a computer. In 1968, Atkinson–Shiffrin memory model, Atkinson and Shiffrin used the term to describe their "short-term store". The term short-term store was the na ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nomological Network
A nomological network (or nomological net) is a representation of the concepts ( constructs) of interest in a study, their observable manifestations, and the interrelationships between these. The term "nomological" derives from the Greek, meaning "lawful", or in philosophy of science terms, "law-like". It was Cronbach and Meehl's view of construct validity that in order to provide evidence that a measure has construct validity, a nomological network must be developed for its measure. The necessary elements of a nomological network are: * At least two constructs; * One or more theoretical propositions, specifying linkages between constructs, for example: "As age increases, memory loss increases". * Correspondence rules, allowing each construct to be measured empirically. Such a rule is said to "operationalize" the construct, as for example in the operationalization: "Age" is measured by asking "how old are you?" * Empirical linkages represent hypotheses before data collecti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Intervention Studies
Intervention, Interventions, The Intervention, or An Intervention may refer to: Entertainment Film and television * ''Intervention'' (1968 film), a Russian film * ''Intervention'' (2007 film), a British film * ''The Intervention'', a 2008 film starring Dwier Brown * ''The Intervention'' (film), a 2016 American film * ''Intervention'' (TV series), an American documentary series * ''Intervention Canada'', a spinoff of the American series * "Intervention" (''Buffy the Vampire Slayer''), a 2001 episode * "Intervention" (''Doctors''), a 2005 episode * "Intervention" (''How I Met Your Mother''), a 2008 episode * "Intervention" (''Stargate Universe''), a 2010 episode * ''The Intervention'', a 2008 Australian TV documentary about the Northern Territory National Emergency Response * ''Canine Intervention'', a 2021 reality TV show Music * ''Intervention'' (album), a 2007 album by Finest Hour * ''The Intervention'' (EP), a 2009 album by The Color Fred * ''The Intervention'', the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pilot Studies
A pilot experiment, pilot study, pilot test or pilot project is a small-scale preliminary study conducted to evaluate feasibility, duration, cost, adverse events, and improve upon the study design prior to performance of a full-scale research project. Implementation Pilot experiments are frequently carried out before large-scale quantitative research, in an attempt to avoid time and money being used on an inadequately designed project. A pilot study is usually carried out on members of the relevant population. A pilot study is used to formulate the design of the full-scale experiment which then can be adjusted. The pilot study is potentially a critical insight to clinical trial design, recruitment and sample size of participants, treatment testing, and statistical analysis to improve the power of testing the hypothesis of the study. Analysis from the pilot experiment can be added to the full-scale (and more expensive) experiment to improve the chances of a clear outcome. Appli ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Structural Equation Modeling
Structural equation modeling (SEM) is a diverse set of methods used by scientists for both observational and experimental research. SEM is used mostly in the social and behavioral science fields, but it is also used in epidemiology, business, and other fields. A common definition of SEM is, "...a class of methodologies that seeks to represent hypotheses about the means, variances, and covariances of observed data in terms of a smaller number of 'structural' parameters defined by a hypothesized underlying conceptual or theoretical model,". SEM involves a model representing how various aspects of some phenomenon are thought to causally connect to one another. Structural equation models often contain postulated causal connections among some latent variables (variables thought to exist but which can't be directly observed). Additional causal connections link those latent variables to observed variables whose values appear in a data set. The causal connections are represented using ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Factor Analysis
Factor analysis is a statistical method used to describe variability among observed, correlated variables in terms of a potentially lower number of unobserved variables called factors. For example, it is possible that variations in six observed variables mainly reflect the variations in two unobserved (underlying) variables. Factor analysis searches for such joint variations in response to unobserved latent variables. The observed variables are modelled as linear combinations of the potential factors plus "error" terms, hence factor analysis can be thought of as a special case of errors-in-variables models. Simply put, the factor loading of a variable quantifies the extent to which the variable is related to a given factor. A common rationale behind factor analytic methods is that the information gained about the interdependencies between observed variables can be used later to reduce the set of variables in a dataset. Factor analysis is commonly used in psychometrics, pers ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Postpositivist
Postpositivism or postempiricism is a metatheoretical stance that critiques and amends positivism and has impacted theories and practices across philosophy, social sciences, and various models of scientific inquiry. While positivists emphasize independence between the researcher and the researched person (or object), postpositivists argue that theories, hypotheses, background knowledge and values of the researcher can influence what is observed. Postpositivists pursue objectivity by recognizing the possible effects of biases. While positivists emphasize Quantitative research, quantitative methods, postpositivists consider both Quantitative research, quantitative and Qualitative research, qualitative methods to be valid approaches. Philosophy Epistemology Postpositivists believe that human knowledge is based not on a priori assessments from an objective individual, but rather upon human ''conjectural, conjectures''. As human knowledge is thus unavoidably conjectural, the assert ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
