SEVQuest - A subjective questionnaire on ecological validity for participant studies

Ecological validity has become an increasingly popular concept in hearing research. However, ecological validity is difficult to assess in practice. This study introduces a questionnaire-based approach to capture participants’ perception of ecological validity in laboratory experiments. The proposed instrument, the Subjective Ecological Validity Questionnaire (SEVQuest), was designed to assess how closely participants perceive an experimental situation and its outcomes to reflect real-life listening experiences. The questionnaire was applied in two virtual reality listening studies that investigated auditory perception in complex environments. Between the two studies, several modifications were implemented to improve the realism of the experimental setup. Results showed an overall increase in questionnaire ratings from the first to the second study, suggesting that these changes improved participants’ perception of the experimental environment. Overall, the results suggest that participant-based assessments can provide valuable insights into designing and evaluating experimental designs and may complement existing researcher-driven evaluation approaches.