Week One Post Two

After reading Ellen Blair's discussion post on D2L about the article on Miley Cyrus's performance at the Video Music Awards on MTV, it made me think about the subject of validity.  In the article, the author was discussing Miley Cyrus's impact on young girls.  The only point she made that had any validity was when she quoted an article by the APA about the consequences of sexualization of girls.  I don't think her argument was valid at all because the only back up on her opinion was an article by the APA that was a generalized theory about sexualization of girls. 

The issue of validity in this article made me think of the issue of validity in developmental psychology.  A portion of developmental psychology is subjective investigation.  Subjective investigation is based on generalizations and not empirical data.  Sometimes it is debatable how valid the conclusions from subjective investigations are.  As a biologist, I believe in order for a study to be valid, empirical data must be obtained through a scientific study.  In most subjective investigations, observations are used to make generalizations and theories about a developmental trait they are studying.  How can subjective investigations be valid if no empirical data was gathered and generalizations are made instead of a solid conclusion?