Give me your feedback on this topic of discussion! Do you agree or disagree or what would do different?
A topic that has peeked my interest is teen pregnancy prevention. A teenager who was birthed by a teen mother is at risk to be a teen mother. Being a teen mother can complicate life and make it harder to achieve. Validity simply means the experiment one is studying reflects what we have conducted. In order to have a high degree of internal validity experimenters strive for maximum control over extraneous variables (Malec & Newman, 2013).
Some of the potential threats that could occur with this study can include selection bias. The selection bias is when the groups are different before manipulation. In this example let’s say you solicit volunteers for this study. One way this can create an error is the volunteers selected. For instance, if teens who is already a mother are selected. These teen mothers may already know the impact of teen pregnancy so they may be more inclined to prevent pregnancy. Another potential threat is experimenter expectancies. This can cause a bias with the study. To avoid this in this study the experimenter should be unbiased such as the experimenter should not have a negative emotion towards teenage pregnancy as this can cause an error with validity.
One way to increase internal validity is to do random sampling. Random sampling will prevent biases and give a more accurate inference.
External validity means that the results extend beyond the set of circumstances created in a single study. One example of external validity is generalizability Generalizability refers to how the results extend to other studies.
In this study internal validity is more important. The participants should be randomly chosen. Preferably participants that have not been impacted by teen pregnancy. Validity is important for the accuracy of the experiment. The most difficult concept about validity is making sure the variables and data used is free of errors.