Question

1. On your final exam for your assessment course, your instructor reports that there was a positive skew with regard to distribution of scores. Describe or draw what those scores might have looked like on this test. What are the implications for the group’s performance? What implications might there be with regard to reliability and validity of the exam?

2. Researchers have long been interested in elements that comprise happiness. If you were to design a survey to determine levels of happiness, what would you include? That is, what elements do you believe combine together to equal happiness? These will become your building blocks (predictive variables) with happiness being the outcome (criterion variable).

Answer 1

1.) if the distribution of test scores shows a positive skewness this indicates the test was a difficult one .

When the scores are mostly low we get to have a positively skewed curve .

Graphical representation :

The scores might have looked liked this on the test as represented by the graph above

Implications on the group's performance is This implies most of the students did the test very poorly but a few did score well in the test and got a high mark. But most of the scores are plotted on x axis and a fewer scores falls at the higher end of the x axis.

this happens if the student was'nt able to understand the test or students were'nt taught the concepts well.

Implications with regard to reliability and validity of the exam i

The more difficult the tests are we get a positively skewed distribution for our test scores

Since most of the students scored low and only few students scored high giving a +ve skewed graph.

Reliability is the consistency of our study referring to how dependably the test measures a characteristic or the variable under study But lack of consistency can be seen in positively skewed data.

Validity of the test is the accuracy of the test with which it measures what is intended to measure , since the scores are low validity gets affected.

2.) For determining the levels of happiness , researchers long been intrested in elements that comprise happiness designing survey should include a questionnaire based on questions that reflect our underlying factors which are taken into consideration.

Elements that can be believed to combine together to equal to happiness are stated as follows:

Factors or Predictor variables include

• age
• health
• education
• level or symptoms of depression
• High self concept
• money (financial status)
• Optimism (positive thinking styles)
• Good social relationships
• food habits
• job status

These variables can act as independent variables with happiness being the dependent or criterion variable .