The researchers Shoda, Mischel and Peake in 1990 wanted to see if delaying gratification leads to self-control in adolescence. Specifically, the researchers do this by making the casual claim that psychological conditions can predict differences in individuals (p. 979). To validate this claim, we will be looking at the context of the research study, Predicting Adolescent Cognitive and Self-Regulatory Competencies From Preschool Delay of Gratification: Identifying Diagnostic Conditions, examining variables and analyzing the validity of the experiment.
To conduct the study, researchers measured the difference in wait times between children when a reward was present. To create variability, children were taught …show more content…
Researchers presented children with objects and had the child select a preferred object. The child was instructed that they could have the selected object when the researcher returned to the room. The researcher would then exit the room and a timer would start to measure the amount of time that passed. During the study different children were taught effective coping strategies to help prolong the response to instant gratification and these were the independent variables. The dependent variable was the time difference between …show more content…
Face validity shows that the study captures how cognitive strategies improve time delay; it does not accurately predict the true time delay. This is because the independent variable is not unique. The test to measure the delay of time has good validity because it accurately represented the time passed that a participant could wait. Convergent validity is present because the study did have a measuring effect of a cognitive strategy that delayed gratification. Internal validity is more questionable since more than one cognitive strategy is used. However, this allows the experiment to have external validity since the results can be generalized. Looking at the data, we see that statistical validity is questionable since researchers had to adjust the data for errors after the 3 year elapsed time