Month: March 2013

Originally published here.

I believe that the importance of this weeks task is more so than the previous weeks as being able to see and give constructive criticism to one’s own work is such a vital skill. This week there was a lot of applying knowledge of terms such as validity and reliability in order to effectively evaluate research. Firstly, you had to differentiate the two terms and their meaning. In terms of validity, there is internal validity, that may include how well extraneous variables that may affect the outcome are controlled and also external validity, which is to how far can you generalise your findings and results to other people beyond the original investigation. In order to have ‘valid’ results you must be certain that the findings directly support your conclusion and for instance in other general research, that you can establish a cause and effect. Reliability is if we or others repeated an experiment will the outcome or results be the same. During this week I have learnt to consider that although a study may have to some extent reliable results, it does not automatically mean that the results are also valid.
This week has helped to to see studies in a critical way and help me notice the flaws in the study that should be adjusted to enhance the quality of the research. However I realise if we take for example validity, if we tried to increase the external validity, this most likely would be at the cost of control and so internal validity would be lower. I think being able to recognise these issues before conduction research and then identifying them along the way is a key skill to have in order to be able to find effective methods to overcome and obtain the best set of results posible in a study.
All in all, so far I believe this course has really helped me to expand my thinking in this area and helped me develop key fundamental skills that I will undoubtedly need to hone in the future. It has helped me think deeper into information that I am given and it has helped me with skills that I can apply to subjects I am currently studying such as pyschology and helped me with giving more sophisticated evaluation of studies. I think the skills developed on the course will certainly be of use in order to become a better independent learner in the future.

Originally published here.

When closely analysing our attempt at finding an answer to what is the ‘best’ way to cook an egg, I realise there are multiple criticisms concerning our research in terms of validity and reliability. For instance, if we take our methodology, supposedly using the method of triangulation should technically increase our internal validity, despite the fact we did have a few sources, our research really lacked the variety of information in order to effectively triangulate the data to establish more valid results. In terms of the online sources and the use of cookbooks, it is hard to really contemplate how reliable or valid the information it provides us with is in terms of its contribution to the research, seeing as ‘best’ in the question, has many interpretations such as being the tastiest and taste being such a personal and subjective concept that most probably these sources aren’t a very valid source to draw information from.
I also conducted a short survey as another way of gathering information for the study and asked people I knew around me to answer a few simple questions regarding the research. In terms of reliability and validity of this method since the question was merely asking for a persons opinion on their preferred way of cooking and egg, there should be no real problems with things like social desirability, meaning internal validity should be high. Furthermore, assuming if you asked the same people, you presumptively would elicit the same response suggesting that in this sense, reliabilty of this method is reasonable. Nevertheless, whilst the survey was quick and easy, the participants were people who were around me and assessable, and there were only 25 people who answered the questions. This means that it really lacks external validity, that is to the extent that we can generalise our findings and results. The people I asked were all from the same area and this is a very small sample meaning it lacked population validity. Whose to say the palate of someone from England would be the same as another from France or Italy? Never mind this within a household there are certain to be different preferences whether it be sweet, savoury or spicy.
During out research we were unable to fully collaborate and therefore correlate our sources and findings so it is hard to get a full assessment of the reliabilty of our study. Additionally, we have not really discussed what we found with what other groups also found in their research to see if they also got similar results to affirm the reliabilty.
It is interesting to see that when we closely inspect the processes during the research and then evaluate the reliability and validity of our findings how many other considerations need to be addressed before you can even begin to accept the results you have found. So if you take our conclusion, it is merely drawing aspects of the data we had in front of us rather than thoroughly evaluating all the information and resources we had gathered at hand.