Validity

• Control

  The extent to which any variable is held constant or regulated by a researcher
• Mundane realism 


  How a task mirrors the real world
• Generalisability

  Being able to generalise the results to everyday life

  Important to remember the participants and situation when considering how generalisable it is
• Internal validity

  Wether the study has tested what it is set out to test
• External validity

  The degree to which research findings can be generalised to other settings (ecological validity); other groups (population validity); over time (historical validity)
• Variables

  Generally used in psychology experiments to determine if changes to one thing results in changes to another
• Extraneous variable

  • A variable other than the IV or DV that has an impact of results
  • If they Can’t be controlled the study will be meaningless
• Realism

  If a study is “set up” participants may not behave how they would normally