This article is part of a special LDRP research-to-practice series introducing key concepts to enable special education practitioners and other nonresearchers to be more informed research consumers. In the article, we explore how social validity is assessed in special education research and how to interpret social validity assessments. Rather than focusing on measuring intervention effects, social validity involves assessing the social importance of the goals, procedures, and outcomes of interventions and programs. We define social validity, provide questions to consider when examining assessments of social validity in research papers, review approaches commonly used to assess social validity with examples from the research literature, and make recommendations for reconciling findings of positive intervention effects on targeted outcomes but absent or negative findings related to social validity in a study. Our take-home message is that considering social validity assessments helps research consumers interpret study findings and informs how to apply findings in practice.

中文翻译：

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考虑特殊教育研究的社会有效性

本文是 LDRP 研究到实践特别系列的一部分，介绍了关键概念，使特殊教育从业者和其他非研究人员成为更知情的研究消费者。在本文中，我们探讨了特殊教育研究中如何评估社会效度以及如何解释社会效度评估。社会有效性不是专注于衡量干预效果，而是涉及评估干预措施和计划的目标、程序和结果的社会重要性。我们定义了社会效度，提供了在研究论文中审查社会效度评估时需要考虑的问题，用研究文献中的例子回顾了通常用于评估社会效度的方法，并就调和积极干预对目标结果产生影响但缺乏或缺乏的结果提出建议。研究中与社会效度相关的负面结果。我们的主要信息是，考虑社会有效性评估有助于研究消费者解释研究结果并告知如何将研究结果应用于实践。