External Validity for Social Inquiry
Michael G. Findley, Michael Denly, and Kyosuke Kikuta
Cambridge University Press · Under Contract
Coming Soon: The full book content will be available here as an online companion to the print edition.
Overview
This book provides a comprehensive guide to external validity inference for social inquiry. We develop an integrated framework combining insights from statistics, epidemiology, economics, and political science to help researchers make rigorous generalization and transportability inferences.
The goal is to move social science closer to accurate inference—where inferred and actual external validity align. We achieve this through careful attention to theory (Model Utility), design (Scope Plausibility), and analysis (Specification Credibility).
Contents
- Introduction: Why External Validity?
- Conceptual Foundations: Generalizability and Transportability
- The M–STOUT Framework
- Model Utility
- Scope Plausibility
- Specification Credibility
- Experiments
- Natural Experiments
- Quantitative Observational Methods
- Qualitative Methods
- Research Synthesis
- Conclusion: Toward Generalized Knowledge
Resources
Supplementary materials for the book:
- EVinference R Package — Tools for implementing the framework
- Interactive Web Tools — Guided analysis without coding
- Related Papers — Academic publications
- Code & Replication Materials — Coming soon
Citation
Findley, M. G., Denly, M., & Kikuta, K. (2026). External Validity for Social Inquiry. Cambridge University Press. Under Contract.