Assignment and Critique – Identifying Threats to Validity
In this assignment, you will review several cases of study designs. Based on concepts you’ve learned about internal validity so far, you should identify and describe the threats to internal validity that are presented in this case.
Review the following three cases below. For each one, answer the following questions:
What threat(s) to internal validity are presented in this proposed study design? Explain why.
If you were consulting for this research team, how would you advise them to change their study design to minimize the identified threats to internal validity?
Research Design #1:
A manager is preparing his employees for a certification test. He has them take a sample test, which they do poorly on. He then has them all take an online training program to practice. After the online training, the manager has his employees take the sample training test again. Can we say the online training was effective?
Research Design #2:
A company wanted to know if their employee burnout relief program was effective at reducing employee burnout. The leader of the study reached out to managers to help recruit employees with particularly high burnout levels to participate in the program. They provided a pre-program survey and a post-program survey to measure employees’ burnout levels. Besides the program itself, what could changes in employee burnout also be related to?
Research Design #3:
A research team observes 30 CEOs over three years as they go through monthly leadership development training. After the three years, the researchers observe the CEOs and determine that their leadership abilities have improved since the beginning of the training, based on their criteria (pre-established definitions of what good leadership looks like, behaviorally). What threat to internal validity could also have resulted, causing an improvement in leadership abilities beyond the leadership development training?
