Validity

• what is validity?

  refers to the extent to which an observed effect is genuine
• what is 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
• what is external validity?

  the extent to which results can be generalised outside of the research setting
• what are three forms of external validity?

  population validity, temporal validity and ecological validity
• what is population validity?

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

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

  a form of external validity - the extent to which findings from a study can be generalised to other settings
• what is 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, leading to low external validity
• what are 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 similar, established measure and check to see if both sets of scores are positively correlated