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Explain What Problems in Meeting Social Science Reliability and Validity Tests a Researcher May Have who uses the AHP Procedures
In a world that is characterized by imperfection and chaos, the use of sound, valid and consistent measurement plays an integral role in restoring order in research. Employing ineffective methods makes it difficult for researchers to accredit their arguments and arrive at meaningful conclusions. This undermines decision making and assumption of timely interventions in resolving the innumerable problems. In other words, ensuring that the measurements that are employed for analysis of social problems are reliable and valid contributes significantly to attainment of precision during the implementation of decisions. This is a sustainable measure that plays an important role in addressing the multifaceted social problems. This paper review the problems in meeting social science reliability and validity tests that a researcher who uses the AHP procedures can have.
According to Clapper, a simple analysis methodology is important in enhancing the credibility of the results. This is because essential follow up can be undertaken to review the process and make amendment accordingly. Although the AHP procedure is methodological, the possibility of an increase in the number of levels and pair-wise decisions make the process to be very complex. This triggers subjectivity that can compromise the credibility of the results. Essentially, Howell ascertains that social science researchers often employ various comparisons during analysis. Usually, this culminates in a large number of the comparison tables. The inherent complexity has far reaching implications on the decisions making process as it compromises consistency in decision making. Besides triggering subjectivity, Baker speculates that this influences the elimination of valid comparison attributes in a bit to enhance management of calculations. This limitation has made the social scientists to devise different software that aid in the managing of the respective data.
Further, Haken posits that the procedure is also liable to human psychology. In particular, researchers employing this method have exhibited the tendency to observe improvement of builds. This has made them to subconsciously inflate rankings pertaining to recent builds. In such cases, the final metrics upon which decision making is based is not always reflective of the input data. Perhaps the role of the inconsistency index impacts more on the aspects of validity and reliability of data. Lockwood and Lockwood indicate that the inconsistency index acts as a standardization measure. It needs to be above the 0.10 threshold value that is acceptable. Getting values that are lower than expected results in modification of the values of the crucial “attribute ranking vector”. This is done based on the stipulated inconsistency index. In such cases, this impacts adversely on the ultimate values. Considering that the results are employed in critical decision making, it undermines precision of the approaches that are adopted.
The PRS group asserts that in order to maximize output, there is dire need to ensure that the decision making processes is objective in nature. This is attained through the weighting process. In light of the above limitation, it is unlikely that researchers would base their decisions on credible information. The inherent modification in an attempt to ensure that the values that re employed conform to certain standards eliminates objectivity from the process. This undermines the credibility of the overall results. Although the information is got from multiple sources, its evaluation and weighting is faulty and compromises the overall quality of the procedure. Thus in order to curb this, social scientists need to be cautious especially with respect to analysis of data. For a process that requires the results to conform to certain values, this is an inherent problem that social science researchers using the AHP procedures continue to grapple with.
Bibliography
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Haken, Nate. “The Fund for Peace”. Accessed 9th September, 2010 at HYPERLINK “http://www.fundforpeace.org/web/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=324&Itemid=489” t “_blank” http://www.fundforpeace.org/web/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=324&Itemid=489
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