Dr.Sheffield is a clinical psychologist who specializes in treating pathological gambling.Pathological gambling is defined as being unable to resist impulses to gamble.Bothered by not having a good measure that he can give to clients to determine whether they are suffering from this condition,he creates a new measure of pathological gambling.The measure has 15 questions,and it takes 20 minutes to complete.

-To test his measure,Dr.Sheffield gives his measure to a group of people in Gamblers Anonymous (GA)and another group in Alcoholics Anonymous (AA).He finds that people in the GA group have higher scores on his new measure than people in the AA group.Why did Dr.Sheffield do this?

Question

Dr.Sheffield is a clinical psychologist who specializes in treating pathological gambling.Pathological gambling is defined as being unable to resist impulses to gamble.Bothered by not having a good measure that he can give to clients to determine whether they are suffering from this condition,he creates a new measure of pathological gambling.The measure has 15 questions,and it takes 20 minutes to complete.

-To test his measure,Dr.Sheffield gives his measure to a group of people in Gamblers Anonymous (GA)and another group in Alcoholics Anonymous (AA).He finds that people in the GA group have higher scores on his new measure than people in the AA group.Why did Dr.Sheffield do this?

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

Dr.Sheffield gave his measure to two groups with different diagnoses to determine how well it distinguishes between them, which is the purpose of criterion validity. If the measure has high criterion validity, then individuals diagnosed with pathological gambling (GA group) should score higher on the measure than individuals diagnosed with a different condition (AA group). Therefore, Dr.Sheffield is obtaining evidence for criterion validity.

DrSheffield Is a Clinical Psychologist Who Specializes in Treating Pathological