Outline what is meant by the term ‘validity’ in psychology. What problems may psychologists have when they attempt to make their studies high in validity?

We can talk about two types of validity in psychology. The first is external validity, which means the extent to which the results and findings of the study can be generalized to real life. The second, internal validity, concerns the methods employed during the study. If a study has high internal validity, it is easily replicable, the data collected is reliable, and overall has a high degree of control by the researcher. However, these two types of validity are at a trade-off: the more we want to ensure high internal validity, controlling every confounding variable and counterbalancing our design, the lower external validity we get, the further from real life situations our results will be.