reliability and validity: What's the difference

Earlier this am I was working on posting a response in the thread concerning vapidity.
Got called away and when I went to post, the thread was closed.

The debate had turned into the reliability and validity of measurement and so this was the post I wanted to put in for what it is worth.

Let's look at reliability and later the validity of the "measures" used to ascertain both in proving which is more reliable and valid measure of vapid.

quote:

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If you google "she is vapid" and "he is vapid"

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AND

quote:

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'he is vapid' produces 213,000 more hits than for 'she is vapid'.

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Really folks this appears to be the argument.

[url=http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/tutorial/Colosi/lcolosi2.htm]Reliab... and Validity: what's the Difference[/url]

quote:

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Reliability is the consistency of your measurement, or the degree to which an instrument measures the same way each time it is used under the same condition with the same subjects,

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and is an estimate. There are two ways that reliability is usually estimated: test/retest and internal consistency.

Coming from a stats point of view, when using and not using " marks around words "he is vapid" or "she is vapid" in comparison to using no quotation marks actually shows "a lack of internal consistency." In other words, the instrument of measure "the use of quotation marks" is NOT reliable measure of these concepts, as removing the quote marks shows a complete different "estimate."

Concerning validity, as suggested in the reference page, "involves the degree to which one is measuring what one is supposed to, more simply, the accuracy of the measurement. I believe the the combined words have validity in the assertains stated here: [i]he is vapid and she is vapid[/i], but the internal consistency is lacking because inserting quotes or no quote marks should show internal consistency and don't.

Unionist you were trying to assert that only this reliability measure was valid, but [b]Test/Retest[/b], [i]is the more conservative method to estimate reliability[/i]. Essentially what Remind showed was that your "measurement" lacked "internal consistency." She used a different grouping (no quote marks) to measure the same concepts of he is vapid and she is vapid. The difference in numbers of responses in the Google search for both genders did not generate a high correlation and thus lacks reliability.

I hope that made sense, and just wanted to move from a personal debate.