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Inter-Rater Reliability Reliability is very important to consider in research studies

Sociology

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Inter-Rater Reliability

Reliability is very important to consider in research studies. There are many different types of reliability and one type is called inter-rater reliability. Inter-rater reliability studies are often conducted when you have more than one person who will be evaluating and scoring data. If inter-rater reliability is high, then different people are recording approximately the same values for the behavior they are evaluating.

Many of you are familiar with Albert Bandura's Bobo doll experiment in 1961. Bandura was a proponent of the social learning theory. In his experiment, he attempted to determine if children would model aggressive behavior.

Let's say you are planning to conduct a modern-day social learning study and plan to record and rate the aggressive interactions after children have watched acts of violence on television. The potential acts of aggression will be rated from video tapes of the children as they play with a life-sized, blow-up toy. Before you conduct your study, you must train your four research assistants to make sure that they are identifying the same behaviors and end up with the same scores.

Create a report in a 3- to 4-page Microsoft Word document with a detailed description explaining how to train the assistants so that they have high inter-rater reliability. Search the South University Online Library to find some inter-rater reliability studies and see if you can get any ideas. Make sure you operationalize aggression before you start to explain your training plan. Be specific about what your research assistants should do to increase the similarity of their rating scores. Submit the reliability training plan for your research assistants.

GENDER PSYCHOLOGY

Debates on Stress Coping

Lazarus's cognitive approach suggests that the way you cope with stress is based on your mental process of how you interpret and appraise a stressful situation in which the level of appraisal determines the level of stress and the unique coping strategies used (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). According to Lazarus, there are specific events or stressors that influence an individual's cognitions of an event, known as appraisals, and your coping strategies refer to your cognitive and behavioral efforts to master the stressful event (Franken, 2007). The primary appraisal assesses whether the situation is threatening, and the secondary appraisal assesses how we should cope with the stress (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984).

Another most debated gender stress–coping study has been the topic of orientation regarding gender and stress. Stress theory is often used to explain the relationship between social disadvantage and health (Scheid & Horwitz, 1999). Stress theory provides a useful approach to understand the relationship between pervasive prejudice and discrimination and health outcomes, but the predictions based on the theory need to be carefully investigated (Aneshensel & Pearlin, 1987).

Another debate on stress coping focuses on role overload. Balancing both work and family often causes a role overload (Barnette & Gareis, 2008). Others see role stress as significant because it explains why women experience more stressful events and strain than men. Poverty also presents a risk for mental disorders for women; statistics show that those who live in poverty are at least two and a half times more likely to receive a mental health diagnosis than those who are not poor (Mossakowski, 2008).

Even if women as a group are not exposed to more stress than men, it is plausible that some subgroups of women—poor women, black women, and single mothers—are disadvantaged in significant ways (Acker, 2000).

In a 2- to 3-page analysis paper in a Microsoft Word document, address the following:

• Do women and men have different coping styles for stress? Evidence with regard to stress and gender has been mixed for decades. Compare the coping styles for stress of both men and women. Support your reasoning with research.
• Some argue that female gender groups are more stressed than lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT) persons as a group. Some are of the opinion that lesbian and bisexual women are exposed to greater stress than heterosexual women because of added disadvantaged sexual minority status and that lesbian and bisexual women are exposed to greater stress than gay and bisexual men because of their added disadvantaged gender status. On the basis of your readings, experiences, and research, what are your findings?