Validity

The aim of scientific research is to produce generalizable knowledge about the real world.

An experiment's validity is established in reference to a specific purpose —the test or technique used may not be valid for different purposes.

However, scientists are human and fallible. The illusion of validity describes our tendency to be overconfident in the accuracy of our judgements, specifically in our interpretations and predictions regarding a given data set. 

  1. Temporal validity tests the plausibility of research findings over a given time frame. When conducting the same experiment at key points over a period of time, historical events may affect results. 

    The most recent example of this is the rise in cancer deaths due to untreated or undiagnosed cancers during the COVID-19 mandatory lockdown. 

  2. Population validity evaluates whether the chosen sample or cohort represents the entire population, and also whether the sampling method is acceptable.

    In evidence-based medicine, randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are given the highest level of  evidence, because they are designed to be unbiased and have less risk of systematic errors. By randomly allocating subjects to two or more treatment groups, these types of studies also randomize confounding factors that may bias results.

  3. Ecological validity questions the level of realism involved in the experiment and whether that impacted the authenticity of the results.

    This is particularly relevant in the field of psychology because human subjects frequently react differently in different environments.

Ecological validity is a type of external validity, which measures the extent to which you can generalize the findings of a study to other situations, people, settings, and measures.

In contrast, internal validity describes the extent to which a cause-and-effect relationship established in a study cannot be explained by other factors,  

For instance, the journal Bio-protocol requests that protocols include information about the number of replicates, statistical tests applied, and controls that were used in its validation. 

Next time, I'll explore how face and construct validity are interlinked with biases.

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Leave a comment!

London Book Fair 2024: challenges for publishers

Image
I went to London with a purpose. It’s always good to meet collaborators and friends, but I had other goals with my visit. You see, it’s never good when the decisions that impact us are arrived at without our input. I wanted to bring awareness of my new peer review standards project to those in the publishing industry that can benefit from them. I'm comfortable researching and reviewing, even editing and managing the peer review process, but hearing editors and publishers speak of the big picture issue was an eye-opener. Change is ever present The publishing industry fancies itself as having evolved to explore the heritage and lived experience of minorities, by more frequently placing a spotlight on hidden and undervalued communities. Jonathan Karp, who spoke on the current model of employee ownership that underpins his role as CEO at Simon & Schuster , perfectly exemplified this—with profits now being reinvested in the company, there’s a new collaborative
Read more

How to spot fake reviewers: a beginner's guide

Image
For those unfamiliar with or new to academic publishing, peer review manipulation is hard to spot. This is mainly because most peer review reports are still confidential documents that stay buried deep in academic journal's editorial offices. As long as this continues to be the default, recognising good and bad peer reviews is difficult enough... now we have to worry about fake peer review as well?! 😒 Well, yes. Yes, we do. The peer review process in academic publishing is unlike any other. The style and content of a manuscript are criticized, as are the thought processes that birthed it. Everything from word choice to significance of the research focus is under scrutiny. In traditional peer review formats, reviewers recommend that manuscripts be accepted or rejected. This much power may make some less scrupulous people guiddy... or yearning to rig the system. The refereeing work that is supposed to be one of the garantors of research integrity is itself highly susceptible to ma
Read more

London Book Fair 2024: OA and AI

Image
In a survey on the trends of academic publishing conducted in 2023, reflecting on the need to reformulate the current business model was front of mind. The need to optimize operational efficiencies may stem from the increased adoption of open access (OA) policies. For those not in the know, OA is a practice that enables research outputs to be distributed online, free of access charges or other barriers, including the ability for copy or reuse, by applying an open license for copyright. The mandates  advocated by the Holdren Memo in the US, the Nelson Memo in the UK, and Plan S for the EU consolidated the view that unrestricted access to research publications is part of an integral right for transparency—we want to view the outcomes of taxpayer-funded research. However, many publishers follow a gold OA model and charge an article processing charge (APC), which is typically paid through institutional or grant funding. This means that readers don't pay, because t
Read more