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In many studies and research designs, there may be a trade-off between internal validity and external validity: [16] [17] [18] Attempts to increase internal validity may also limit the generalizability of the findings, and vice versa. This situation has led many researchers call for "ecologically valid" experiments.
Internal validity, therefore, is more a matter of degree than of either-or, and that is exactly why research designs other than true experiments may also yield results with a high degree of internal validity. In order to allow for inferences with a high degree of internal validity, precautions may be taken during the design of the study.
Replication in statistics evaluates the consistency of experiment results across different trials to ensure external validity, while repetition measures precision and internal consistency within the same or similar experiments. [5] Replicates Example: Testing a new drug's effect on blood pressure in separate groups on different days.
The use of a sequence of experiments, where the design of each may depend on the results of previous experiments, including the possible decision to stop experimenting, is within the scope of sequential analysis, a field that was pioneered [12] by Abraham Wald in the context of sequential tests of statistical hypotheses. [13]
Internal validity is an inductive estimate of the degree to which conclusions about causal relationships can be made (e.g. cause and effect), based on the measures used, the research setting, and the whole research design. Good experimental techniques, in which the effect of an independent variable on a dependent variable is studied under ...
This is a workable experimental design, but purely from the point of view of statistical accuracy (ignoring any other factors), a better design would be to give each person one regular sole and one new sole, randomly assigning the two types to the left and right shoe of each volunteer.
Conducting field experiments allows researchers to make causal inferences from their results, and therefore increases external validity. However, confounding may decrease internal validity of a study, and ethical issues may arise in studies involving high-risk. [2]
Ecological validity, the ability to generalize study findings to the real world, is a subcategory of external validity. [6] 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 ...