ABSTRACT
The poetic parody, Hiawatha Designs an Experiment (Kendall, 1959/1973), cleverly illustrates the critical relation between reliability and validity. Hiawatha, the mighty hunter, demonstrates that he is able to repeatedly shoot his arrows in tight groups such that the “average point of impact [is] very near the spot he aimed at” (p. 331). Unfortunately for Hiawatha, despite his great consistency, he always misses the target. Thus, although reliable, his shots are not valid. In research, this translates into use of reliable measures and experimental procedures that can be replicated by other researchers, but finding the resulting data do not hit the mark in terms of our confidence that we have manipulated or measured the variables of interest. Our goal in research is to control as many variables as is feasible so that we may reveal the relations among a smaller set of variables. As the reader will see, this is not such a simple process.
