6.15 validity

Validity in psychological research - does the research test what its meant to test, are the results accurate

Internal validity - if there are other factors (other than the IV) that affected the DV

  • social desirability bias

  • Demand characteristics

  • Investigator effects/ researcher bias

  • Uncontrolled extraneous variables

External validity - can a study’s findings be generalised from the sample to the target population

  • ecological validity, generalisable to other environments

  • Mundane realism, is the task similar to the real world

  • Population validity, is the sample representative

  • Temporal validity, over time

Assessing validity

  • face validity - does the test appear to measure what it claims to be measuring

  • Criterion validity - can compare the data from a test to another measure of the same variable, and identify a correlation

  • Concurrent validity - is data from a new test similar to an established test

  • Predictive validity - can performance on a test predict future performance/ behaviour

Improve validity

Internal

  • random allocation

  • Standardised procedures

  • Counter balancing

  • Single and double blind trials

  • Peer review

External

  • Replication: multiple settings, different groups, use real world tasks