A student has carefully selected the clock she will use to time the presentation of materials in her experiment.She wants to be sure that she will be able to measure the times to within a hundredth of a second rather than a tenth of a second.Which characteristic of the instrument is the student trying to ensure?
A)validity
B)reliability
C)accuracy
D)precision

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

The student is trying to ensure precision, which refers to the ability of an instrument to measure a quantity consistently and with a high degree of exactness. In this case, the student wants to measure time to within a hundredth of a second, which requires a high level of precision. Accuracy (C) refers to the ability of an instrument to provide measurements that are close to the true value of the quantity being measured, while validity (A) refers to the extent to which an instrument measures what it is intended to measure. Reliability (B) refers to the consistency of the measurements provided by an instrument over repeated trials. While reliability is important for any measurement, it is not specifically related to the student's goal of achieving a high level of precision in time measurement.

A Student Has Carefully Selected the Clock She Will Use