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Sociology vocabulary · Research Methods

Validity

Meaning in sociology, with examples

/vəˈlɪdəti/nounCore term

In sociology, validity means: The extent to which a research method or measure actually captures what it claims to measure and gives a true picture of the social reality being studied.

In Turkish: geçerlik, geçerlilik

How it is used

Paired with reliability in almost every methods course. Qualitative methods are often said to have high validity because they capture meaning in depth. Researchers also speak of internal validity and external validity, which is how far results apply beyond the study.

Example sentences

  1. Official crime statistics have limited validity because many crimes are never reported.

  2. To improve validity, we discussed our findings with the participants.

Common collocations

  • high validity
  • internal validity
  • external validity
  • threat to validity
  • improve validity
  • reliabilityThe extent to which a research method gives consistent results when it is repeated by another researcher or at another time under the same conditions.
  • operationaliseTo turn an abstract concept, such as social class or trust, into something that can be observed and measured, for example through specific survey questions.
  • qualitative researchResearch that collects non-numerical data, such as interviews, observations and texts, to understand people's experiences, meanings and points of view in depth.
  • samplingThe process of selecting a smaller group of people or cases from a larger population so that the researcher can study them and draw conclusions.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Research Methods

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