Psychology Assessments - Reliability and Validity Essay

Psychology Assessments - Reliability and Validity - Essay Example There are some cases in which an assessment instrument can be reliable but not be valid. Suppose for instance a person used an assessment instrument. There are corresponding results in the assessment using the said instrument. However, the use of the assessment instrument cannot be entirely valid if the person using it is not an expert at understanding the results from the assessment. Thus, this is the same as the assessment instrument is not valid at all considering that it gives results but cannot be acceptable. The assessment instrument therefore has to be used by the right person in order for its result to be valid and in general, it can be reliable. In this case, the reliability and validity of the assessment instrument is associated with its user. Thus, a higher level of reliability cannot be given to the assessment instrument considering that the validity issue is in question. In the above illustration, the entire issue is not a two-way process between the reliability and vali dity issues within the assessment instrument. There has to be another external factor and in this case the level of reliability and validity of an assessment instrument may vary with respect to its user.