In contrast, if a method is not reliable, it’s not valid.Įxample: Your weighing scale shows different results each time you weigh yourself within a day even after handling it carefully, and weighing before and after meals. If a method is reliable, then it’s valid. If the method of measuring is accurate, then it’ll produce accurate results. If the results are accurate according to the researcher’s situation, explanation, and prediction, then the research is valid. Validity shows how a specific test is suitable for a particular situation. In school assessments, it'd be safest to go by what your teacher tells you.Validity refers to the accuracy of the measurement. I suggest checking with a couple of teachers and classmates to be on the safe side. Reliability and accuracy I'm fairly confident about validity was the one I was always iffy with. 'Without its legs, the cockroach can't hear the clap and doesn't move.' My teacher said this experiment was reliable because you got the same results every time, but invalid because obviously, the poor roach needs legs to run away.Īgain, not completely sure that my definitions are right.

He did it again ripped off the legs, clapped, and it didn't move. He ripped of a cockroach's legs, set it on a table and clapped loudly over it. A data logger is obviously more accurate than the naked eye.Ī funny example my teacher told us was this: a scientist set out to prove that cockroaches listened through their legs. Measuring with a stopwatch that calculates milliseconds is obviously more accurate than one that only calculates up to seconds. When you repeat an experiment and get the same results, it is reliable.Īccuracy: the easiest one, simply how accurate it is. Reliability: how consistent the results are. If in biology, for example, you were testing say the level of enzyme activity with respect to changes in temperature, you obviously wouldn't do one experiment at 30 degrees and say ph 4 and another at 40 degrees at pH 8 you'd keep everything except temperature constant. all factors are kept constant aside from those being investigated. Validity: the experiment correctly tests the aim - i.e. I never completely understood them myself, but the general consensus from all my classes was:

Damn, my teacher gave us a sheet of definitions for these but I chucked all my HSC sheets out a few days back.

Define reliability and validity