What do internal threats to validity involve?

Internal threats to validity primarily concern the factors that can compromise the integrity of conclusions drawn from a study. Specifically, these threats impact the ability to establish a cause-and-effect relationship between the independent and dependent variables within the study. Correctly identifying these threats is crucial since they can lead to erroneous interpretations of the results.

When inference correctness is jeopardized, it indicates that the observed effects may not accurately reflect the true relationship between variables due to confounding factors, biases, or uncontrolled variables. This means that any conclusions drawn from the data could be misleading, leading researchers to make inappropriate claims about the causal relationships in their findings.

Understanding internal threats to validity helps researchers to design studies that control for potential biases and confounding variables, ensuring that the results are more reliable and valid. This is essential in research methodology, where the goal is to establish accurate and trustworthy outcomes that can be generalized to broader populations.