Joe and teresa are married and they both work outside the home. they have three children ages 18, 6 and 2. also, joe's 20 year old niece is a full-time student who lived with them all year and is claimed as their dependent. which of the following expenses that joe and teresa paid qualify for purposes of claiming the child and dependent care credit? a) payments to their 18 year old daughter to care for her 2 year old sister. b) payments made to joe's mother who lives with them but does not qualify as their dependent. c) payments to a private school for their 6 year old to attend first grade. d) payments to joe's niece. e) none of the above expenses qualify.

Reliability and validity reliability and validity are two important considerations that must be made with any type of data collection. reliability refers to the ability to consistently produce a given result. in the context of psychological research, this would mean that any instruments or tools used to collect data do so in consistent, reproducible ways. unfortunately, being consistent in measurement does not necessarily mean that you have measured something correctly. to illustrate this concept, consider a kitchen scale that would be used to measure the weight of cereal that you eat in the morning. if the scale is not properly calibrated, it may consistently under- or overestimate the amount of cereal that’s being measured. while the scale is highly reliable in producing consistent results (e.g., the same amount of cereal poured onto the scale produces the same reading each time), those results are incorrect. this is where validity comes into play. validity refers to the extent to which a given instrument or tool accurately measures what it’s supposed to measure. while any valid measure is by necessity reliable, the reverse is not necessarily true. researchers strive to use instruments that are both highly reliable and valid.