Question

Dr. Kang, a cognitive psychologist, conducts an experiment examining the effect of emotion on memory. He provides lists of 15 words to two groups of participants at his university. He puts the names of all the participants in a hat. The first 20 names he assigns to Group A, and the last 20 he assigns to Group B. Group A is given a list of words that are very emotional in content (e.g., passion, murder). Group B is given a list of words that are neutral in content (e.g., houseplant, desk). He then measures how many words each group is able to remember after being distracted for 5 minutes by watching a video about the history of the university. He finds that Group A remembers 15% more words than Group B Dr. Kang sends his study to a journal to be published. One of the peer reviewers questions the way Dr. Kang manipulated emotion, arguing that being exposed to emotional words does not make one emotional. The reviewer is questioning which of the following? A) The construct validity of the study B) The internal validity of the study C) The external validity of the study D) The statistical validity of the study

Answer 1

a) The construct validity of the study

Step-by-step explanation:

In psychology, the construct validity is a term that refers to the "degree to which a test measures what it claims to be measuring". In other words, it refers to the extent in which the instrument measures the construct in an adequate way.

In this example, Dr. Kang wants to examine the effect of emotion on memory and he gives two different groups, two different lists of words (one emotional in content and one neutral in content) and then measures how many words each group is able to remember.

However, his peers argue that being exposed to emotional words does not make one emotional, in other words, his instrument or the way he's measuring emotion is not ACTUALLY measuring it, so it doesn't measure what it claims to be measuring. Therefore, they are questioning the construct validity of the study.