Reliability is one of the chief characteristics researchers consider when judging the quality of data used in their studies. Within the positivist paradigm, data are typically quantified, and thus it is relatively easy to derive estimates of reliability. Within the interpretivist paradigm, however, the idea of data reliability is a looser science.…

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how displaying disattenuated correlation coefficients along with their unadjusted counterparts will allow the reader to assess the impact of unreliability on each bivariate relationship. The paper also demonstrates how a proposed new "what if reliability" analysis can complement the conventional null…

The purposes of this paper are to identify common errors made by researchers when dealing with reliability coefficients and to outline best practices for reporting and interpreting reliability coefficients. Common errors that researchers make are: (1) stating that the instruments are reliable; (2) incorrectly interpreting correlation coefficients;…

This article provides a framework for reporting internal consistency reliability in counseling research and other related social science fields, including guidelines relative to score reliability coefficients and associated confidence intervals for both full sample and subgroups. Follow-up techniques for investigating low score reliability are…

Some years ago, B. Efron and his colleagues developed bootstrap resampling methods as a way of estimating the degree to which statistical results will replicate across variations in sample. A basic problem in the multivariate use of bootstrap procedures involves the requirement that the results across resamplings must be rotated to best fit in a…

In this article, the authors (a) illustrate how displaying disattenuated correlation coefficients alongside their unadjusted counterparts will allow researchers to assess the impact of unreliability on bivariate relationships and (b) demonstrate how a proposed new "what if reliability" analysis can complement null hypothesis significance…

In 1994, the journal "Educational and Psychological Measurement" (EPM) instituted an editorial policy requiring authors to use technically appropriate language and methodological practices in their discussions of validity and reliability. To determine if this policy has had any effect on current publications, 150 validity and reliability…

Editorial board members of "Educational and Psychological Measurement" were asked to list up to five publications each, written since roughly 1950, that they thought were seminal to shaping the measurement field. This bibliography lists 59 of their selections as a "hit parade" of measurement readings. (SLD)

The purposes of this study were to devise and provide validity and reliability data for scores on an instrument measuring attitudes toward school violence and to develop importance ratings of the items based on data from teachers in a high school that had experienced a highly publicized violent episode. Two independent samples were used. Based on…

The purpose of the present study was to determine how two different data collection techniques would affect the Q-factors derived from several factor analytic procedures. Faculty members (N=146) from seven middle schools responded to 61 items taken from an instrument designed to measure aspects of an idealized middle school culture; the instrument…

A framework for understanding methodological practices from the perspectives of internal validity, external validity, statistical control validity, and construct validity is presented. One hundred doctoral dissertations completed between 1980 and 1988 at a single urban public university were analyzed for various methodological practices and types…