Men's Sexual Preference for Younger Women

Men's Sexual Preference for Younger Women
Construct Validity
Schwarz and Singer's study (2013) evaluated men's sexual preference for younger women as opposed to older, menopausal women based on their photographs against a white or red background. The results of the study demonstrated that photographs of both young and older women in front of a red background have the same effects on a subject's sexuality (Schwarz & Singer, 2013). Men of various ages perceived older women to be less sexually attractive than younger women. There was no sufficient information presented in the article about the construct validity of the study as there was no stated validation testing through computation of Cronbach alpha that was discussed. The measures may be invalid because many factors related to an attraction like personal preference, experiences, the sexuality of the participants, and other factors were considered and taken into account. However, the test measure seems to be aligned with the intended measure, but confounding variables are not discussed.
Statistical Validity
The statistical validity of the study is doubtful at best. While the researchers included valid statistical analysis tools such as the mean, standard deviation, and p-values, there was no further testing done, and it seems that the interpretation of the data was based solely on means and ranking. While these methods can be acceptable for lower-level investigations, they are not considered to be a sufficient measure of statistical validity that judges whether the results or the findings of the study are indeed statistically significant or that it has enough capacity to reject or fail to reject a quantitative hypothesis.
Internal Validity
It is apparent that the specific causal claim that the researchers wanted to make is that the red color influences the attractiveness of women, no matter what their ages are. From the orientation of the study, it is apparent that it could have been a correlational study depending on multiple factors involved when judging attractiveness, as presented by the researchers in their chosen measures (sexual attractiveness, physical attractiveness, intelligence, and sympathy). However, the researchers opted to use sub-measures and go to rank them by using the computed means per variable. No correlational analysis was done. Hence, there is no dilute quantitative internal validity that can be conferred on the study. Since the study apparently intended the color red is part of the causal factors involved in establishing attractiveness, it seems that the methodology and analysis done by the researchers cannot support their claims well.
External validity
The external validity of the study was also not established by the findings, because of the weaknesses of the study and its presentation, along with the lack of sufficient evidence supporting the construct, statistical, and internal validities of the study. There are various weaknesses present in the study that took away from the ability of the results to be generalized within the male population. First, the researchers chose to randomly select participants from a German shopping mall rather than conducting a systematic and diversified sampling method that can effectively gather represen...