Psychometric challenges of measuring behavior

Presenter

Bruno Kopp, Neuropsychologist at the Department of Neurology, Hannover Medical School, Germany

Background

Psychometrics is concerned with the theory of measurement in behavioral sciences.  Psychometric methods are frequently used for the construction and evaluation of multi-item, subjective (i.e., introspective or self-report) questionnaires. However, the impact of psychometrics on objective behavioral/physiological measures is less acknowledged. Here, the importance of psychometrics for the quality of behavioral/physiological research will be illustrated based on an application of traditional psychometric methods to exemplary behavioral data. The main topics that will be addressed are how internal consistency and validity of objective behavioral/physiological measures should be analyzed for ensuring sufficient data quality. Psychometrics offers a theoretical framework that was under-utilized by behavioral/physiological researchers for no reason, and that is relevant to all scientists in these fields.

Benefit

During this tutorial, the audience will learn about major psychometric problems that arise with behavioral/physiological measures. The aim is to give the audience the ability to consider psychometric topics in their own research.

Content

The topics discussed will be: 

• Why does psychometrics matter in objective (behavioral/physiological) studies?
• How to ensure adequate reliability (consistency) of behavioral/physiological measures
• How to ensure (convergent/divergent) validity of behavioral/physiological measures
• Generalization of psychometric estimates, how to look at results across different studies

Audience

This tutorial is of interest to anybody doing behavioral/physiological research.