Social psychologists will often run pilot studies that are very similar to actual experiments that they intend to run later but that differ in that participants are used as consultants to check that the experiment instructions are understandable, that the scenarios are believable, and so forth. Running a pilot study such as this particularly helps to increase the ________ of an experiment.

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Running a pilot study helps to increase the internal validity of an experiment, by checking and refining the experiment instructions, scenarios and process, ensuring that the experiment is measuring what it intends to measure. This helps to improve the quality of data collected and the accuracy of the results. External validity refers to the generalizability of the findings beyond the study's context, measurement validity refers to the extent to which the measures used accurately reflect the concepts being studied, and statistical significance refers to the probability that the results of the study are not due to chance.

Social Psychologists Will Often Run Pilot Studies That Are Very