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46. Types of validity as applied to psychological research.

Lecture



The validity of a study is the evaluation of a completed empirical study in terms of the «correctness» of its organization and the possibility of regarding the results obtained and the conclusions drawn as sound. Validity, when methods of observation or experiment are used, includes an assessment of the representativeness of the study as the degree of its approximation to possible flawless mental models.

The validity of an experiment is the degree of its correspondence to the intended mental models. Five main types of validity are distinguished: internal, external, operational, construct, and population.

Internal and operational validity are assessed in any experiment;

external validity – in a natural one (???); construct validity – in testing theoretical hypotheses; population validity – in assessing the representativeness of the sample in terms of the possibility of transferring generalizations to populations.

1. Internal validity is a criterion for evaluating the planning and conduct of a study that makes it possible to regard as sound the conclusions concerning precisely the dependency represented in the hypothesis – as a relationship between the IV and the DV – in terms of the experiment's approximation to the ideal and infinite experiment.

2. External validity is a criterion for evaluating a study in terms of solving the problems of the correspondence between the variables formulated in the hypothesis and the methodologically realized conditions, on the one hand, and those to which the obtained results are generalized (approximation to the experiment of full correspondence), on the other.

3. Operational validity is the evaluation of an experiment in terms of the degree of correspondence between the empirically laden concepts of the IV, DV, and AV, on the one hand, and the methods of setting and measuring the variables used in the study, on the other. In a laboratory experiment it may coincide with the assessment of construct validity.

4. Construct validity is an analogue of external validity; it is the assessment of the correspondence between the variables represented in the experimental hypothesis and the theoretical constructs and the theoretical hypothesis.

The assessment of the possibility of generalization depends on construct validity (and on external validity).

The interrelation of operational and construct validity.

These types of validity make it possible to evaluate the substantive planning of a study.

5. Population validity is the assessment of how legitimate it is to extend generalizations obtained on a limited sample to broader samples and populations. The assessment of this type of validity depends both on the quality of the selection of subjects from the population and on the strategies for controlling individual differences.

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Lectures and tutorial on "Experimental psychology"

Terms: Experimental psychology