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How to examine external validity within an experiment
Author(s) -
Kowalski Amanda E.
Publication year - 2022
Publication title -
journal of economics and management strategy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.672
H-Index - 68
eISSN - 1530-9134
pISSN - 1058-6407
DOI - 10.1111/jems.12468
Subject(s) - external validity , stylized fact , internal validity , focus (optics) , computer science , psychology , cognitive psychology , econometrics , social psychology , statistics , mathematics , economics , macroeconomics , physics , optics
A fundamental concern for researchers who analyze and design experiments is that the estimate obtained from the experiment might not be externally valid for other policies of interest. Researchers often attempt to assess external validity by comparing data from an experiment to external data. In this paper, I discuss approaches from the treatment effects literature that researchers can use to begin the examination of external validity internally, within the data from a single experiment. I focus on presenting the approaches simply using stylized examples.