To assess the ecological validity of a study, you must critically examine the setting where it took place. However, the study may lack ecological validity if in the real world people do not read an article on this topic. Although some use the terms interchangeably, mundane realism refers specifically to the extent to which events in an experiment are likely to occur in the real world.įor example, an experiment where participants are asked to read a news article about local politics in another country has mundane realism because it uses activities common in everyday life (e.g., reading the news). NoteEcological validity is sometimes also called mundane realism. If you have reason to suspect that the study’s environment may have influenced the generalizability of its results or led to research bias, the study’s ecological validity may be questioned. external validityĮcological validity assesses the validity of a study’s findings based on the environment or setting in which the study took place. To achieve high ecological validity, the best approach would be to conduct the experiment on an actual flight.Įcological validity is often applied in experimental studies of human behavior and cognition, such as in psychology and related fields. The experience of watching the video at home is vastly different from watching it on a plane. Using this approach, your findings would have low ecological validity.

Afterwards, you send them a questionnaire to find out what they can recall from the video. You recruit a sample of 100 people and send them a safety video, asking them to watch it on their own time. You are interested in whether or not they can recall specific information from them.

Example: Ecological validityYou are researching whether airline passengers pay attention to in-flight safety videos. If a test has high ecological validity, it can be generalized to other real-life situations, while tests with low ecological validity cannot. Try for free What Is Ecological Validity? | Definition & ExamplesĮcological validity measures how generalizable experimental findings are to the real world, such as situations or settings typical of everyday life.

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Reliability vs validity psychology