Cognitive Science research is hard to conduct, because researchers must take phenomena from the world and turn them into laboratory tasks for which a reasonable level of experimental control can be achieved. Consequently, research necessarily makes tradeoffs between internal validity (experimental control) and external validity (the degree to which a task represents behavior outside of the lab)...

Study objective: To examine the completion rate, internal reliability, and external validity of a home affluence scale based on adolescents’ reports of material circumstances in the home as a measure of family socioeconomic status. Design: Cross sectional survey. Setting: Data were collected from a school based study in seven schools in the north of England Cheshire over a five month period fro...

In an experiment, we study risk-taking of cohabitating student couples, finding that couples’ decisions are closer to risk-neutrality than single partners’ decisions. This finding is similar to earlier experiments with randomly assigned groups, corroborating external validity of earlier results. JEL Classification: C91; C92.

A sound base of evidence for different kinds of psychotherapy is a fundamental prerequisite for adequate access to treatment. The present article addresses the question of what kind of evidence is required to demonstrate that a specific method of psychotherapy works. Referring to recent conceptualisations of the logical structure of scientific theories, the authors argue that randomised control...

The external validity of artificial "trivial" laboratory settings is examined. Past views emphasizing generalizability of relations among conceptual variables are reviewed and affirmed, One major implication of typical challenges to the external validity of l ratory arch t ed wi h gression r search: If l borat ry es a ch ow n external validity, then laboratory studies should fail to detect rela...

In any program evaluation context, the quality and usefulness of an estimated intervention effect depends to a significant extent on its internal and external validity. If a study is internally valid, we can credibly state that the estimated impact was caused by the intervention being evaluated. If a study is externally valid, we can confidently extrapolate findings to a larger population of in...

In designing any causal study, steps must be taken to address both internal and external threats its validity. Researchers tend focus primarily on dealing with However, once they have conducted an internally valid analysis, that analysis yields established set of findings for the specific case in question. As future usefulness result, however, what matters is degree this paper we provide a form...