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... > social science subjects > psychology > social psychology > social psychology research > methods > ecological validity
social science subjects > psychology > social psychology > social psychology research > ecological validity
... > other subjects > arts and humanities > philosophy > schools of philosophy > empiricism > validity > ecological validity
... > social science subjects > psychology > psychological assessment > theory and methodology > validity > ecological validity

Preferred term

ecological validity  

Definition

  • Ecological validity refers to the extent to which behavior indicative of behavior studied in one environment (often, reference is to a laboratory setting) can be taken as characteristic of (or generalizable to) an individual’s cognitive processes in a range of other environments (often glossed as “everyday” or “natural”). Discussions of the problem of ecological validity first came to prominence in psychological research in the United States owing to the work of Egon Brunswik (1943) and Kurt Lewin (1943), two German scholars who emigrated to the United States in the 1930s. [Source: The SAGE Encyclopedia of Social Science Research Methods; Ecological Validity]

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https://concepts.sagepub.com/social-science/concept/ecological_validity

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