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External validity is the validity of applying the conclusions of a scientific study outside the context of that study. [1] In other words, it is the extent to which the results of a study can generalize or transport to other situations, people, stimuli, and times.
This is because multiple baselines can provide data regarding the consensus of a treatment response. Such data can often not be gathered from ABA (reversal) designs for ethical or learning reasons. Experimenters are advised not to remove cases that do not exactly fit their criteria, as this may introduce sampling bias and threaten validity. [1]
Internal validity, therefore, is more a matter of degree than of either-or, and that is exactly why research designs other than true experiments may also yield results with a high degree of internal validity. In order to allow for inferences with a high degree of internal validity, precautions may be taken during the design of the study.
Thus, the CCCS design has better internal validity than a consecutive case series. The CCCS design also address some concerns about the external validity or generality of findings of small-n single-case experimental design studies because it explicitly includes all cases encountered, regardless of outcome. By including all cases, any bias ...
In other words, the relevance of external and internal validity to a research study depends on the goals of the study. Furthermore, conflating research goals with validity concerns can lead to the mutual-internal-validity problem, where theories are able to explain only phenomena in artificial laboratory settings but not the real world. [13] [14]
Validity has two distinct fields of application in psychology. The first is test validity (or Construct validity ), the degree to which a test measures what it was designed to measure. The second is experimental validity (or External validity ), the degree to which a study supports the intended conclusion drawn from the results.
ABA is an applied science devoted to developing procedures which will produce observable changes in behavior. [3] [7] It is to be distinguished from the experimental analysis of behavior, which focuses on basic experimental research, [8] but it uses principles developed by such research, in particular operant conditioning and classical conditioning.
It is a significant threat to a study's internal validity, and is therefore typically controlled using a double-blind experimental design. It may include conscious or unconscious influences on subject behavior including creation of demand characteristics that influence subjects, and altered or selective recording of experimental results themselves.