PSYB01H3 Chapter Notes - Chapter 14: Operational Definition, Type I And Type Ii Errors, Internal Validity
Document Summary
Issues of generalizing results to other population; problem with college students as participants. Issues of generalizing result to other cultures and ethnic groups. Problem of generalizing to other experimenters and possible solutions. Importance of replications, distinguishing between exact replications and conceptual replications. Recall: internal validity ability to infer a causal relationship exist between the variables. External validity extent to which findings may be generalized. Rarely are participants randomly selected from the general population, usually they are selected because they are available: college students! High % (70%) of studies published used college student as participant. Potential problem is that such studies use a highly restricted population. College students: young, late adolescence sense of self-identity still developing, social and political attitudes in flux, high need for peer approval, unstable peer relationships. Research shows those students groups are more homogeneous than non-student samples.
