 in research, the ecological validity of a study means that the methods, materials and setting of the study must approximate the real-world that is being examined.brewer, m. (2000). research design and issues of validity. in reis, h. and judd, c. (eds) handbook of research methods in social and personality psychology. cambridge:cambridge university press. unlike internal and external validity, ecological validity is not necessary to the overall validity of a study.shadish, w., cook, t., and campbell, d. (2002). experimental and quasi-experimental designs for generalized causal inference boston:houghton mifflin. ==external validity versus ecological validity== ecological validity is often confused with external validity (which deals with the ability of a study's results to generalize). while these forms of validity are closely related, they are independentâa study may possess external validity but not ecological validity, and vice versa. for example, mock-jury research is designed to study how people might act if they were jurors during a trial, but many mock-jury studies simply provide written transcripts or summaries of trials, and do so in classroom or office settings. such experiments do not approximate the actual look, feel and procedure of a real courtroom trial, and therefore lack ecological validity. however, the more important concern is that of external validityâif the results from such mock-jury studies generalize to real trials, then the research is valid as a whole, despite its ecological shortcomings. nonetheless, improving the ecological validity of an experiment typically improves the external validity as well. the original meaning of 'ecological validity' defines it more narrowly as a property of stimuli in perceptual experiments. the popular use, broadly equivalent to 'realism', has overtaken it, at least in a level psychology circles. for the original (and some feel correct) use, see the entry on 'ecological validity - perception' and especially the paper by hammond, 1998, which is referred to there. this can be accessed at: http://www.albany.edu/cpr/brunswik/notes/essay2.html . 'representative design' captures the popular usage of ecological validity and can be used in its place. ==see also== *external validity *construct validity *content validity *statistical conclusion validity ==references==
Validity_(statistics)