While reading a medical journal, you find an article about a new screening test that predicts a patient’s risk for suicide. The authors have shown that high scores on their screening test correlate with an increased risk for completed suicide. Nine months later, another group repeats the study and demonstrates that male patients consistently scored higher on the screening test than female patients. Furthermore, the authors of the second article state that when gender is taken into account, the previously reported correlation between the screening test and increase in suicide rate vanishes. The authors of the second study conclude that this limits the usefulness of the screening test to predict a patient’s risk of suicide.The authors of the second paper faulted the usefulness of this screening tool because of its lack of which of the following?
- internal reliability
- test-retest reliability
- content validity
- predictive validity
5) discriminative validity
View Explanation
In this case, the authors of the second study show that the test fails to discriminate suicide risk when gender is removed. Knowing that men are at an increased risk for successful suicide attempts may decrease the test’s usefulness. See answer 7 for definitions of other choices.