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External validity is the validity of applying the conclusions of a scientific study outside the context of that study. [1] In other words, it is the extent to which the results of a study can generalize or transport to other situations, people, stimuli, and times.
Generalizability theory, or G theory, is a statistical framework for conceptualizing, investigating, and designing reliable observations. It is used to determine the reliability (i.e., reproducibility) of measurements under specific conditions.
Homogeneity can be studied to several degrees of complexity. For example, considerations of homoscedasticity examine how much the variability of data-values changes throughout a dataset. However, questions of homogeneity apply to all aspects of the statistical distributions, including the location parameter.
The question of whether results from a particular study generalize to other people, places or times arises only when one follows an inductivist research strategy. If the goal of a study is to deductively test a theory, one is only concerned with factors which might undermine the rigor of the study, i.e. threats to internal validity.
The theory of statistics provides a basis for the whole range of techniques, in both study design and data analysis, that are used within applications of statistics. [1] [2] The theory covers approaches to statistical-decision problems and to statistical inference, and the actions and deductions that satisfy the basic principles stated for these different approaches.
Another example highlighting the differences between these terms is from an experiment that studied pointing [7] —a trait originally attributed uniquely to humans—in captive chimpanzees. This study certainly had external validity because when testing if captive chimps will gesture towards food by pointing, the results were reproduced in ...
In the design-based approach, the model is taken to be known, and one of the goals is to ensure that the sample data are selected randomly enough for inference. Statistical assumptions can be put into two classes, depending upon which approach to inference is used. Model-based assumptions. These include the following three types:
Statistical inference makes propositions about a population, using data drawn from the population with some form of sampling.Given a hypothesis about a population, for which we wish to draw inferences, statistical inference consists of (first) selecting a statistical model of the process that generates the data and (second) deducing propositions from the model.