Glossary // Glossary term Technical
External validity
The extent to which a result obtained in one study holds for other people, settings, times, interventions and outcome measures. A well-controlled experiment in university students may have strong internal validity yet limited external validity for clinical populations or other cultures. External validity is judged from the diversity of samples and settings across studies, and it is one reason the evidence ledger records each source's population. How one could reason about recording a catharsis-like change of state: signals, features, inference and context, baselines, self-report, error costs and ethics, and why every step stays uncertain. Nothing on this site measures anyone. Every public claim on this site with its type, evidence level, confidence, sources and review date, and an appraisal of each reference. How claims are graded, how art is kept apart from evidence, and how to report a problem.Where the site uses it