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However, the very methods used to increase internal validity may also limit the generalizability or external validity of the findings. For example, studying the behavior of animals in a zoo may make it easier to draw valid causal inferences within that context, but these inferences may not generalize to the behavior of animals in the wild.
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.
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]
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]
This is why validity is important for quasi experiments because they are all about causal relationships. It occurs when the experimenter tries to control all variables that could affect the results of the experiment. Statistical regression, history and the participants are all possible threats to internal validity.
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. This study certainly had ...
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.
Also known as external or criterion group method, empirical test construction attempts to create a measure that differentiates between different established groups. For example, this may include depressed and non-depressed individuals, or individuals high or low in levels of aggression.