Original Post by Michael Muehlberger:

There are a few things I could do to increase the reliability and validity of my study. First to help improve the reliability I could use a test-retest strategy. This would probably be the most beneficial since I could observe food seeking behaviors of the same food item (colored enrichment, specific colored fruit, etc.) on separate occasions. This would help reveal potential factors that also impact food seeking behaviors like weather, time of day, or noise levels, and help determine the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of color vision more accurately. Depending on how detailed the study gets I could also use the parallel form strategy to observe the food seeking behaviors in relation to different types of colored food items.

Second, I’d most likely use a content strategy to increase the validity of the study. For my study I could interview zookeepers, zoo managers, or even animal behaviorists to figure out if the methods of assessment accurately measure what I intend to measure.

My Comment:

Great idea to observe food seeking behaviors of the same food item. It is a stellar way to control a variable which yields accurate results. What is a food item appropriate to use for the study’s goals? How would you separate the occasions? Would there be a certain advantage in allowing for more or less time to pass between observations? How many times do you think re-test is needed?

Second, I agree with interviewing a wide array of professionals to increase content validity. For my literature review, I found studies using interviewees from a variety of locations and tribes as being particularly informative as some were more relevant to my project than others. Increasing the type of interviewees makes your project applicable to a wider range of writers which increases the change it would be read by people. What are other ways to increase the content validity of the study? Could observing a wider array of animal species be useful?

Once again, I am such a fan of this topic!