Theory-Testing, Generalization, and the Problem of External Validity*

By Jeffrey W. Lucas. 2003

348 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Subfields: Applied Psychology, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ec7410b08fd61a03f16ce3ce4d3189304f53c195

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In Applied Psychology

In Sociology and Political Science

Citations in the corpus

Field experiments across the social sciences (2017, background): “They affect all empirical research, albeit in different ways (Heckman 1992, Lucas 2003, Banerjee & Duflo 2009, Deaton 2010).”
The Future of Empirical Methods in Software Engineering Research (2007, background): “Furthermore, theory is the means through which one may generalize analytically [118, 134], thus enabling generalization from situations in which statistical generalization is not desirable or possible, such as from case studies [134] and across populations [91].”
Groups Reward Individual Sacrifice: The Status Solution to the Collective Action Problem (2009, neutral): “Robb Willer”
A new framework to enhance the interpretation of external validation studies of clinical prediction models. (2015, positive): “The underlying rationale bears a strong resemblance to John Locke’s doctrine of empiricism [38] and Karl Popper’s theory of refutability [39 e 41].”
Relative Deprivation and Adolescent Outcomes in Iceland: A Multilevel Test (2009, result): “7 The accumulation of such findings across societies (including the current findings) supports the generalizability of relative deprivation theory, as well as the external validity of the current [End Page 1242] study (see”
A survey of controlled experiments in software engineering (2005, background): “(Note that convenience sampling is also common in other disciplines such as clinical medicine [34] and social sciences [33].”
Gender Differences in Strain, Negative Emotions, and Coping Behaviors: A General Strain Theory Approach (2007, background): “…whether this general theory is applicable to African Americans who lived back in 1980 given the importance of replication in theory testing based on data collected from different settings (in terms of time and place) or populations, such as gender or race/ethnic groups (Bollen, 1989; Lucas, 2003).”
The use of web questionnaires in second language acquisition and bilingualism research (2010, background): “The issue of generalizability is still hotly debated in social sciences (Lucas, 2003).”
Convenience samples of college students and research reproducibility (2014, background): “Such homogeneity intuitively decreases variability in measurements and, ceteris paribus, increases the likelihood of rejecting a null hypothesis of no difference (Lynch, 1982, 1983), which in turn increases the probability of identifying theory violations when a theory is false (Lucas, 2003).”
Representative learning design and functionality of research and practice in sport. (2011, background): “…validity came to refer to the generalization of research findings from the study of a specific sample, to either a larger population, often referred to as population validity (Bracht & Glass, 1968), or to behavioral situations beyond the experimental context and population studied (Lucas, 2003).”