ust have the aforementioned reliability.The author considered and examined issues of validity thoroughly and did so successfully. The only difficulties that arose in lieu of the validity issues are factors such as age, that have been controlled for, and instances of polygyny which were not regulated or consistent. “One might expect these variables to correlate highly, since men who marry young have more opportunity to become polygynous than men who marry at older ages” (Cronk 1991: 355.) However, Cronk alleviated the problem between these two most important intermediate variables. “One way to tease apart the effects of these two variables is to examine the correlation between polygyny and reproductive success, while controlling for age at first marriage, as shown in table 7” (Cronk 1991: 355.) In similar fashion, he dismantles all possible variations of factors that have negative effects on validity. Another issue under scrutiny (applicable to both validity and reliability) would be the varying sizes of herds over time. Considering that, during the span of ones lifetime (reproductive), herd size would vary, current livestock wealth may not be a reasonable indicator for that entire cycle. As this is the only aspect which can not be completely controlled for and due to its unquestionable reliability the pragmatic validity is guaranteed.SamplingThe Mukogodo study administered by Cronk constitutes a probability sample because one can state the probability of any particular case appearing in the sample. Knowing the probabilities of given correlations makes the evaluations of his data much more accurate. The sampling procedure consisted of his coworker, Beth Leech, and himself gathering information (aforementioned variables) for all men over the age of 20. These were then separated and categorized into ‘age sets’. The Mukogodo involved in the study (approx. 800 in the population {the sample size is roughly...
