ecological validity

Terms from Statistics for HCI: Making Sense of Quantitative Data

The ecological validity of a test, study or experiment is the extent to which it is like the real world. Performing a controlled experiment in a laboratory would usually have low ecological validity, whereas an ethnographic study, observing people in their own workplace, would have high ecological validity.

Used on pages 115, 118, 133, 139

Also known as ecologically meaningful, ecologically valid