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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.
Validity [5] of an assessment is the degree to which it measures what it is supposed to measure. This is not the same as reliability, which is the extent to which a measurement gives results that are very consistent. Within validity, the measurement does not always have to be similar, as it does in reliability.
A true experiment would, for example, randomly assign children to a scholarship, in order to control for all other variables. Quasi-experiments are commonly used in social sciences, public health, education, and policy analysis, especially when it is not practical or reasonable to randomize study participants to the treatment condition.
In qualitative research, a member check, also known as informant feedback or respondent validation, is a technique used by researchers to help improve the accuracy, credibility, validity, and transferability (also known as applicability, internal validity, [1] or fittingness) of a study. [2]
External validity pertains to the process of generalizing the findings of the study to the population from which the sample was drawn (or even beyond that population to a more universal statement). This requires an understanding of which conditions are relevant (or irrelevant) to the generalization.
A distinction of sampling bias (albeit not a universally accepted one) is that it undermines the external validity of a test (the ability of its results to be generalized to the rest of the population), while selection bias mainly addresses internal validity for differences or similarities found in the sample at hand. In this sense, errors ...
Ecological validity, the ability to generalize study findings to the real world, is a subcategory of external validity. [ 6 ] Another example highlighting the differences between these terms is from an experiment that studied pointing [ 7 ] —a trait originally attributed uniquely to humans—in captive chimpanzees.
Correlations that fit the expected pattern contribute evidence of construct validity. Construct validity is a judgment based on the accumulation of correlations from numerous studies using the instrument being evaluated. [22] Most researchers attempt to test the construct validity before the main research. To do this pilot studies may be ...