Social Interaction Threats to Internal Validity

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Social Interaction Threats to Internal Validity
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What Are Social Threats?

• All are related to social pressures in the
  research context, which can lead to posttest
  differences that are not directly caused by the
  treatment itself.
• Most of these can be minimized by isolating the
  two groups from each other, but this leads to
  other problems (for example, hard to randomly
  assign and then isolate, or may reduce
  generalizability).

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Diffusion or Imitation of Treatment

• Controls might learn about the treatment from
  treated people (for example, kids in the school
  cafeteria).

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Compensatory Equalization of Treatment
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Compensatory Equalization of Treatment

• Administrators give a compensating treatment to
  controls.

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Compensatory Rivalry

• Controls compete to keep up with treatment group.

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Resentful Demoralization

• Controls "give up" or get discouraged.
• The screw you effect.