Dear Mr. Kim,

I looked throughout the text and my lecture notes and cannot seem to locate the threats to validity and reliability. Also, what are the sources of junk science? I would greatly appreciate it if you could e-mail me back the answers to these questions. Thank you very much.

Jodee Aranias

-- Jodee Aranias (jaranias@eden.rutgers.edu), February 16, 2000

Answers

Hi, Jodee-

I would interprete the term "threats to validity and reliability" as how reliability and vaildity are checked. The textbook doesn't specifically metion about the possible threats. Rather, it shows what kinds of reliability tests are used in order to check the quality of social research. For example, the eplanation of reliability test such as test-retest, intercoder reliability test, and split-half reliability test shows possible threats to a better (reliable) study.

So, I would study:

What is the reliability; what kinds of reliability tests are there; how each differs from others; what is the validity; what kinds of validity test (evaluation) are there; how each differes from others.

Hope it helps.

-- hyo kim (hkimscil@rci.rutgers.edu), February 17, 2000.