Ecological validity

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Ecological validity is the empirical validity of a psychological examination finding for everyday events . As with the external validity , the transferability and applicability of a statement obtained through a laboratory examination ( psychological experiment , laboratory experiment ) or a test examination ( psychological test ) to other people and above all to other situations outside the laboratory (generalizability) is meant.

Ecological and external validity

While the external validity of a test result or another finding (predictor) is usually described as a prediction performance, i.e. as a statistical correlation with the finding obtained in another situation (criterion situation), from the point of view of ecological validity, the fundamental question is above all according to the transferability to everyday life and the living environment . Relevant questions in this sense are, for example:

  • To what extent does a computer-aided social-psychological experiment record the cooperation and social interaction as it takes place in everyday life through the cooperation of two test subjects (often psychology students) ?
  • Does the result of a written aptitude test have any validity for actual performance in professional practice?

Already Kurt Lewin (1927) had on the lives near the fieldwork spoken in contrast to laboratory research. For the evaluation of the research results, the psychological structural similarity is an essential question.

“The closeness to life of the experiment is not to be sought in the quantitative agreement with reality, but the decisive factor is whether the same type of occurrence is really present in both cases. If it is about incidents with the same structure, a conclusion ... is permissible within broad areas. "

Egon Brunswik followed this approach with his demand for representative planning of psychological examinations, for example by focusing on the question of the extent to which an experimental study plan ( research design ) corresponds to the naturally given conditions. With the greater interest in environmental research and environmental psychology , the question of the transferability and everyday relevance of laboratory research, but also of the ecological validity of the results of psychological tests, which can be interpreted as artificial miniature situations in the field of application, arose more frequently.

With regard to the famous research work on "ecological psychology" and "eco-behavioral science" by Roger G. Barker and co-workers (1978), Gerhard Kaminski (1988) emphasized the radical methodological position, because the entire scientific work in Psychology is confronted with questions of "ecological relevance", "ecological representativeness", "ecological validity" and has to develop naturalistic methods to analyze all types of human behavior and action in their natural living environment.

The term "ecological validity" was also used by the sociologist Aaron Victor Cicourel , who critically discussed the validity of interviews and surveys , since the way in which they were answered and interpreted did not sufficiently correspond to the daily life of a community.

methodology

The ecological validity of psychological test results cannot - like the external validity of a test result - be checked directly as a criteria correlation or in a single generalizability study. What is meant is the differentiated and thorough evaluation of test results with regard to the test plan and the agreement with the special contextual conditions of the data collection, whereby a number of aspects, difficulties and possible control strategies have to be considered. The assessment of ecological validity is therefore based primarily on expert assessments.

See also

literature

  • Roger G. Barker: Habitats, environments, and human behavior: studies in ecological psychology and eco-behavioral science from the Midwest Psychological Field Station, 1947-1972 . Jossey-Bass, San Francisco 1978, ISBN 0-87589-356-2 .
  • Egon Brunswik: Perception and the representative design of psychological experiments. 2nd ed. Univ. Calif. Press, Berkeley 1956.
  • Aaron Victor Cicourel: Interviews, surveys, and the problem of ecological validity. In: American Sociologist , Volume 17, 1982, pp. 11-20.
  • Jochen Fahrenberg, Michael Myrtek, Kurt Pawlik, Meinrad Perrez: Outpatient assessment - recording behavior in everyday life. A behavioral science challenge to psychology. In: Psychologische Rundschau , Volume 58, 2007, pp. 12-23.
  • Carl Friedrich Graumann: Context as a problem in psychology . In: Zeitschrift für Psychologie , Volume 208, 2000, 55-71. doi : 10.1026 // 0044-3409.208.12.55 .
  • Jürgen Hellbrück, Manfred Fischer: Environmental Psychology. Hogrefe, Göttingen 1999 ISBN 3-8017-0621-4 .
  • Gerhard Kaminski: Ecological Perspectives in Psychological Diagnostics? In: Journal for Differential and Diagnostic Psychology , 9, 1988, pp. 155-168.
  • Ernst Dieter Lantermann (Hrsg.): Basics, paradigms and methods of environmental psychology. Encyclopedia of Psychology. Hogrefe, Göttingen 2008, ISBN 978-3-8017-0595-4 .
  • Kurt Lewin: Law and Experiment in Psychology. In: Symposium , Volume 1, 1927, 375-421.
  • Kurt Lewin: Field theory in social sciences . Harper, New York 1951.
  • Matthias R. Mehl, Tamlin S. Conner (Eds.): Handbook of research methods for studying daily life . Guilford Press, New York 2012 ISBN 978-1-60918-747-7 .
  • Jean-Luc Patry (Ed.): Field research. Methods and problems of social science research under natural conditions. Huber, Bern 1982.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kurt Lewin: Law and Experiment in Psychology , 1927, p. 419