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Edited: May 06, 2022

Psychology terminology: Ecological validity

As part of a new feature for the forum, I would like to post every Wednesday and Friday, a term that is used in psychology, and describe it in plain terms.

Image credits/AkirEVarga/pixabay

Anyone wanting to may also request a term and I'll do my best to provide a clear and succinct definition (Though I do ramble so who knows 😁).

The term for today is: Ecological validity

Ecological validity is a crucial part of any research/experiment and really dictates how useful the overall findings are going to be.

Ecological validity in broad terms relates to how reliably the findings or behaviour found in an experiment is generalisable to behaviour found in a real-world context.

As a researcher, one might wonder whether behaviour that is exhibited during an experiment would also measure up to behaviour exhibited in a real-world situation. If the laboratory conditions or the experimental conditions closely match those that appear in real life, then the behaviour exhibited is more likely to appear in a real-world context, and thus would be said to have a good degree of ecological validity.

Thus, when researchers design an experiment, they usually try to make conditions that would reflect real-world applications, although this can be difficult whilst maintaining ethical guidelines.

8 comments

8 Comments

Yetunde

May 07, 2022

This is educative.

Like the relative style of a couple's romance in a wood forest may be quite different from the dimension it will take when they are in the four walls of their home. The environment may possibly influence their behaviours.

Daniel Sumner

May 07, 2022

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Replying to

That's wonderfully stated and absolutely correct. 😮

Daniella Moriarty

May 07, 2022

Oh I like this idea a lot! I'm looking forward to learning new terms and how these can be applied.

Daniel Sumner

May 07, 2022

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Replying to

Thanks. I'll try not to ramble when I explain the terms but no promises 🤣

ViktorijaT

May 07, 2022

This is a pretty good idea! I look forward to reading your posts, if I have any ideas I'll let you know..

Daniel Sumner

May 07, 2022

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Replying to

Thanks for the compliment😁, I love everyone's posts on here, I'm always learning somehting new.

sambunmi3

May 06, 2022

@Daniel Sumner thanks for this very informative post. I have a question to ask:

What is ecological validity example?

Daniel Sumner

May 06, 2022

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Replying to

Yeah I should have provided an example, I'll definitely do that in my next explanation.

Here's a brief example on ecological validity:

Example

Imagine a researcher wanted to explore how students react to testing procedures within an educational setting.

If the researcher uses a setting that is radically different from the usual setting of a test such as outdoors then behaviour might be quite different, in which case the ecological validity of the result would be lower. So a researcher will want to replicate as much as possible, the environment in which the students are usually tested to ensure that the results of the experiment are generalisable.

Lighting, materials and other environmental factors can either lower or improve the chances of ecological validity.

Though sometimes, one cannot have a result with too high a ecological validity as there would be an issue with ethics. For instance if one wanted to assess the degree to which a brief lesson in driving impacted upon someone's first attempt, they could not give the individual a brief lesson than let a complete novice onto the road. So they would need to use other methods to test the hypothesis, such as a driving simulator.