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RELIABILITY
Identifies one of the standards (another being validity) against which the tools used to measure concepts are judged. Reliability refers to consistency of results over time. If a bathroom scale is used to measure the concept of weight, one must ask: Is this tool (the bathroom scale) reliable? Does it provide consistent results? To check this get back on the scale a second time to see if it produces the same results. Notice that the bathroom scale may be reliable and yet be inaccurate. Are I.Q. tests a reliable measure of ‘intelligence’? Are official suicide statistics reliable measures of the ‘suicide’ rate? Are questions about which political party a person would vote for a reliable measure of ‘political preference’? Since in many of these examples it is difficult to assume, like weight, that the results would remain the same over time, it may be more correct to think of reliability as indicating consistency of results among users of the tool or measurement. See: VALIDITY / .

Last updated 2002--0-9-

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Athabaca University ICAAP

© Robert Drislane, Ph.D. and Gary Parkinson, Ph.D.
The online version of this dictionary is a product of
Athabasca University and
ICAAP

*This social science dictionary has 1000
entries covering the disciplines of sociology, criminology, political
science and women's study with a commitment to Canadian examples and
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