Chapter 8 Review Questions and Exercises

1. In a newspaper or magazine, find an instance of invalid or unreliable measurement. Justify your choice.

2. Suppose a geriatric social worker assesses whether a life history review intervention improves the level of depression among frail nursing home residents by administering a depression measure to them before and after the intervention. Suppose the measure had its validity assessed by comparing scores of frail nursing home residents on it to the scores of healthy elderly folks living independently. a. What type (and subtype) of validity was assessed? b. Why should the social worker be concerned about the measure’s sensitivity? c. What more would be needed to establish the measure’s construct validity? d. If the measure is valid, can we assume it is also reliable? Why?

Chapter 8 InfoTrac/Internet Exercises

1. Use InfoTrac College Edition to find several research articles in the journal Health and Social Work that utilized existing scales to measure variables. How adequately do the articles report the reliability and validity of the scales they used? What type of reliability and validity do they report? What types of reliability and validity tend to get reported more and less often than others?

2. Using a search engine, enter the search term cultural bias in IQ tests. Then go to one of the listed websites that intrigues you. (Some of the sites are humorous.) Summarize what you find there and how it illustrates cultural bias in measurement.

3. Return to the website mentioned in Chapter 5, “Psychosocial Measures for Asian- American Populations,” at www.columbia.edu/cu/ssw/projects/pmap. Find two abstracts at that site that assessed different forms of reliability and validity. Briefly describe and contrast how each assessed reliability and validity and their results.