Research Validity and Ethics Questions

Principles and practices that ensure research produces trustworthy and ethically sound results. Topics include internal and external validity, construct validity and reliability, common threats such as selection bias, confounding variables, measurement error and sampling issues, and design choices that improve causal inference such as randomization, control groups, pre registration and power analysis. Candidates should also be able to interpret statistical evidence responsibly, explain p values and confidence intervals in context, and discuss effect sizes and practical significance. Ethical considerations include informed consent, confidentiality and anonymization, participant safety, data minimization and security, and institutional review or oversight processes. Interviewers evaluate how candidates balance design rigor, interpret results conservatively, and apply ethical safeguards in study execution.