I/O Psychology.
Assignment 4, 8 Feb 2K
Jeffrey Absher
xxx-xx-xxxx
Explain Criterion Deficiency, Criterion Relevance, and Criterion Contamination.
Criterion Deficiency is the portion of conceptual criterion that is not measured by actual criterion.
Conceptual criterion is the theoretical construct that the designers of the experiment want to measure.
Actual criterion is the data that can be collected to imply the conceptual criterion. Usually one cannot
measure that conceptual criterion, and must use actual measurable quantities to determine correlating
values. An example is measuring the theoretical concept of morality. One could look at things such as
number of times the subject was arrested for a crime or convicted of crime and the number of hours spent
in church per week. There are some moral people that have been arrested and have never been to a church.
That set of people who have a high degree of morality (the conceptual criterion) yet whose empirical data
(actual criterion) does not point to morality would be the set known as the criterion deficiency. A welldesigned experiment attempts to minimize criterion deficiency.
Criterion relevance is the portion of conceptual criterion that correlates with the actual criterion. In the
morality example, this would be the set of persons that spend a high number of hours per week attending
church and have never been arrested or convicted of a crime that are moral people. A well-designed
experiment attempts to maximize criterion relevance.
Criterion contamination is the set of subjects that score high in actual criteria, yet still have a low degree
of the conceptual criteria. In the morality example the criterion contamination is the set of persons that
attend church, have not been arrested or convicted, yet still are immoral. A well-designed experiment
attempts to minimize criterion contamination. Criterion contamination consists of bias and error. Bias is the
portion of the set criterion contamination that is due to the actual criterion measuring a variable that the
experimenter is not interested in. In the morality example bias is introduced because measuring the number
of hours spent in church per week is measuring factors in addition to morality; the number of hours spent in
church per week also measures the number of “free time” hours per week, the religiousness of the subject,
the desire for social interaction etc. These extra variables bias the actual criterion. Error is the portion of
the set actual criteria not correlated to conceptual criterion that is unaccounted for by bias.