Dr. Kang, a cognitive psychologist, conducts an experiment examining the effect of emotion on memory. He provides lists of 15 wo
rds to two groups of participants at his university. He puts the names of all the participants in a hat. The first 20 names he assigns to Group A and the last 20 he assigns to Group B. Group A is given a list of words that are very emotional in content (e.g., passion, murder). Group B is given a list of words that are neutral in content (e.g., houseplant, desk). He then measures how many words each group is able to remember after being distracted for 5 minutes by watching a video about the history of the university. He finds that Group A remembers 15% more words than Group B. Dr. Kang sends his study to a journal to be published. One of the peer reviewers questions the way Dr. Kang manipulated emotion, arguing that being exposed to emotional words does not make one emotional. The reviewer is questioning which of the following?
a) the statistical validity of the study
b) the internal validity of the study
c) the external validity of the study
d) the construct validity of the study
Construct validity relates to the extent in which assumptions from the operationalizations in your analysis to the conceptual frameworks on which those operationalizations were centered may genuinely be produced.
Construct validity is related to generalization, as is external validity.
