PSYC 1010 Chapter 1: Chapter 1.docx

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 1010
• Professor: Anne Bergen

Document Summary

How to transform observations into variables: variables are any observation of a physical, attitudinal, or behavioral characteristic that ca take on different values, behavioral scientist study abstract variables such as self esteem, discrete variables can take on only specific values (whole numbers, mo other values can exist in these numbers (no decimals, continuous variables can take on a full range of values (numbers that have several decimal places, infinite number of potential values exist. Reliability and validity: reliability refers to the consistency of a measure, if you weigh yourself the weight is always the same, validity refers to the extent to which a test actually measures what it was intended to measure, the weight may be wrong but it is still reliable, no test with poor reliability can have high validity, but even with high reliability there can be still low validity.