LectureResMethOzer.pptVIP

History Example The Attitude Change Study You measure your subjects’ attitudes toward gun control. You manipulate the IV to try to alter individuals’ attitudes. HOWEVER, a shooting occurs at two office buildings and 27 people die. Measuring attitudes again, after the manipulation and the historical event, would not be as accurate had the event not occurred. * (2) Maturation (Internal Validity) Physical, intellectual, and emotional changes that naturally occur within individuals over a period of time. For example, let’s say that you administered a group of 3rd graders a special math program and observed that their math skills improved between the pretest and the posttest. This difference might have been caused by the fact that the children have grown older and are simply better able to understand math concepts.? * (3) Testing (Internal Validity) “Pretest Sensitization” Improved performance on a posttest simply from exposure to the pretest. For example, let’s say you are interested in assessing the improvement of these 3rd graders’ math knowledge. You administer the pretest at the beginning of the academic year and the posttest after 6 weeks. The pretest cues the subjects about the posttest. You need to consider the timing of the posttest, and perhaps making the posttest similar but different than the pretest. * (4) Instrumentation (Internal Validity) Inconsistent use of the measuring instruments. For example, perhaps you have two different research assistants administer your posttest, and they administer the instructions differently. Also, if you do pre to post testing and create two “similar but different” instruments, you could then have an invalidity problem due to instrumentation (i.e., two different tests are not equivalent). * (5) Statistical Regression (Internal Validity) “Regression to the Mean” Tendency of participants who score highest on a test (pretest) to score lower on the second test (post test; i.e., or visa versa). This usually is the case when t