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The results are technically sound and accurate.
Researcher should test the validity of the measure and data before using it. |
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Experimental research that takes place in laboratory settings.
This research would cover biochemical responses and other medically-based sexual tests. |
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Experimental research that takes place in more "natural" or "real-life" settings.
This would be going to the test subject's natural environment and testing their behavior. |
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A study that does a good job controlling for the possible effects of extraneous variables on the dependent variable. Cannot have any outside reasonings or explanations.
A caused B... B happened directly because of B. Difficult to test in field research because of all the outside factors. |
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The ability to generalize the study results to other groups and settings beyond those in the current experiment.
Researcher can use this to their benefit when the study tests one group of minorities and they apply it to a different group. |
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| Threats to Internal Validity |
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Definition
The extraneous factors that allow for alternative explanations as to what caused a given effect on the dependent variable.
I would imagine women are a big threat to internal validity since sexual response is so dependent on their current mindset and cannot be controlled. |
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Definition
Events that occur between the pretest and the posttest of a research study that could affect participants in a way that impacts the dependent variable.
For example, a woman is testing a new medication for sexual arousal and in between her pre and post test she fell in love with a person. |
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Changes occur in participants because of passage of time (e.g., physical, mental, etc.)
So anyone tested below age 25 could fall into this as their pre-frontal lobe develops. |
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Taking a pretest somehow affects the taking of the posttest.
A participant could go home and research on their own the questions that they were asked during the pretest so they can score "better" not more naturally, on the posttest. |
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Instruments are not accurate/precise enough or do not measure what they are supposed to measure.
The survey given to people leaves too much room for interpretation and subjectivity. |
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Participants selected in a non-random manner differ in some way.
If you are studying the ability to have an orgasm and only choose Sexologists as your study participants... a bit biased. |
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Using intact groups that vary in some element of maturity.
Too much room for variables! A 70-year-olds body is not going to sexually respond the same way a 21-year-olds body does. |
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Extremely high or extremely low scores regress toward mean.
Too much variable between who knows nothing and who knows everything. |
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Participants drop out of the study or cannot be located.
This will be a problem when studying sexuality in nursing homes or among high-risk populations. |
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Altered behavior due to the effects of being studied or observed.
This could be an issue when asking anyone about their sexual experience. They could overinflate the truth to make their sex life sound more exciting. Or erase their experience to make them sound more pious. |
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Definition
Altered behavior because of the expectations.
This is why it's important to have a vague title for the experiment. If you let your participants know that you are going to test on the hookup culture in college, then perhaps they'll say they hook up with people when they don't. |
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Treatment of experimental group spills over to comparison or control groups.
If there was hostility during experimentation because of how the participant was treated, then that could affect the results. |
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The location of the program or data collection affects participant responses.
So if you are conducting the study in a church versus a whore house, it will be different. |
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Differences in persons presenting a program affect the program.
If multiple people are conducting the experiment, then their presentation and personality will affect the results. |
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