Validity

• validity


  refers to the extent to which an observed effect is genuines
• internal validity


  the extent to which a test measures what it is supposed to measure- are the effects due to the manipulation of the IV and not some other factor
• three forms of external validity


  -population validity

  -temporal validity

  -ecological validity
• population validity


  a form of external validity- the extent to which findings from a study can be generalised to other people
• temporal validity


  a form of external validity- the extent to which findings from a study can be generalised to other particular time periods
• ecological validity


  a form of external validity- the extent to which findings from a study can be generalised to other settings
• mundane realism


  refers to how realistic the task in the experiment is- if an experiment has low mundane realism then the task is not similar to real life and this leads to low external validity
• two ways of assessing validity

  1. face validity- the extent to which test items look like what the test claims to measure

  2. concurrent validity- the extent to which a psychological measure relates to an existing similar measure. give same group a similar, established measure and check to see if both sets of scores are positively correlated