Measuring error without error

The course Measuring error without error - Reliability, agreement and validity studies is being postponed to next academic year 2025-2026.

It is imperative for all measurement instruments to be reliable (provide consistent measurements) and valid (measure what it is meant to measure). Lack of reliability and validity can lead to incorrect conclusions, not replicable research findings and the impossibility, for everyday users of the measurement instrument, to assess changes.

This course aims to equip researchers with the statistical knowledge necessary to plan and perform reliability, agreement and validity studies of measurement instruments providing quantitative or qualitative information.

At the end of the course, participants should be able to

• Make the distinction between the concepts of reliability, agreement and validity. These words are too often used interchangeably in the literature leading to confusion and inappropriate statistical analyses;
• Plan a reliability, agreement or validity study given practical constraints (e.g. number of subjects), particularities of the measurement instrument and study aims;
• Determine which statistical measure(s) is (are) the most appropriate depending on the aim of the study, the study design and the level of measurement of the outcome;
• Interpret the results of the study, communicate the results to an audience with minimum statistical knowledge, and acknowledge the limitations of the statistical approach chosen.

SPSS and R will be used as statistical software.