Animals That Start with D | List & Examples

Published on November 26, 2024 by Julia Merkus, MA Revised on March 20, 2025

There are many animals that start with “D.” This article contains a list of animal names that start or end with “D.”

Example: Animals that start with D in a sentence
The deer wandered through the forest while a dove flew overhead, and a dingo prowled nearby, keeping an eye on its surroundings.

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Animals That Start with A | List & Examples

Published on November 25, 2024 by Julia Merkus, MA

There are many animals that start with “A.” This article contains an extensive list of animal names that start or end with “A.”

Example: Animals that start with A in a sentence
During my trip to the wildlife park, I was amazed to see an aardvark digging for ants, an alpaca grazing peacefully in a field, and an antelope gracefully leaping across the savanna exhibit.

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What Is Dogfooding? | Meaning & Examples

Published on November 6, 2024 by Julia Merkus, MA Revised on May 6, 2025

Dogfooding refers to a practice where a company tests and evaluates its own products or product updates in real-life settings to collect feedback from its employees before public release. It comes from the phrase eating your own dog food.

Dogfooding can help businesses ensure the quality, usability, or reliability of their products and is a common practice in the tech industry. Dogfooding has two variants that are often combined:

  • Many companies use dogfooding before a product reaches its customers. This allows businesses to collect user experiences and identify bugs without harming their reputation. They process the feedback from the research process before the official release to actual customers.
  • Most companies also promote the internal use of their own software products after their release in order to collect more feedback on real-life issues other users might also face.
Dogfooding example
Meta, Microsoft, and Google are examples of companies that use dogfooding during the development of new products or product updates. For example, Microsoft offers “Outlook Dogfood,” which helps them test the newest versions of Outlook before they release it to the public.

QuillBot also uses dogfooding to continuously improve tools such as the Grammar Checker, paraphrasing tool, AI Detector, or AI Humanizer.

It’s essential to recruit employees with characteristics that mimic those of your end users to participate in dogfooding.

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What Is Predictive Validity? | Definition & Examples

Published on July 25, 2024 by Julia Merkus, MA Revised on January 13, 2025

Predictive validity refers to the extent to which a measure or test accurately predicts future behavior, performance, or outcomes. It is considered a subtype of criterion validity and is often used in the fields of education, psychology, and employee recruitment.

Predictive validity example
A study finds that a standardized test score (e.g., SAT or ACT) is a strong predictor of a student’s first-year GPA in college. In this case, the predictive validity of the test score is high because it accurately predicts the student’s future academic performance.

By ensuring high predictive validity, researchers and practitioners can make more informed decisions and develop more effective interventions.

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What Is External Validity? | Definition, Threats & Example

Published on July 24, 2024 by Julia Merkus, MA Revised on July 14, 2025

External validity refers to the extent to which the findings of a study can be generalized to other populations, settings, and contexts beyond the specific one in which the study was conducted. In other words, it’s about whether the results can be applied to other people, places, and situations.

External validity example
A researcher creates an experimental design to investigate the influence of alcohol consumption on sleep. They use systematic sampling to draw a sample of 100 law students from a local university who drink regularly.

They’re invited to attend a get-together where their alcohol consumption is moderated. They’re monitored while they sleep at the university’s laboratory to control for confounding variables and to reduce the risk of bias. At the end, they fill out a survey with multiple-choice questions about their quality of sleep. The results show that increased alcohol consumption correlates with a lower quality of sleep.

The external validity of this study is low because:

  • The study was conducted in an artificial environment (laboratory), which makes it difficult to generalize results to different settings.
  • The sample consisted of law students only, which makes it difficult to generalize the results to different groups.
  • The sample only included people who drink regularly, which makes the sample unrepresentative of the population (sampling bias).

External validity is important because researchers want to apply the results from their experimental designs (often conducted in laboratories or artificial environments) to the real world.

Tip
Generative AI tools, like QuillBot’s AI Chat, can help you think through potential problems with validity. Just supplement any information you get with expert opinion and your own judgment.

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What Is Content Validity? | Definition & Examples

Published on July 24, 2024 by Julia Merkus, MA Revised on May 22, 2025

Content validity refers to the extent to which a test or instrument accurately represents all aspects of the theoretical concept it aims to measure. This concept, also known as a construct, often cannot be measured directly.

Content validity is critical for making informed decisions and drawing accurate conclusions based on the research data.

Content validity example
A psychology professor creates a test to measure students’ knowledge of primary sources. The test consists of 10 multiple-choice questions, and one of the questions is: “What is the difference between primary and secondary sources?”

This question contributes to the test’s high content validity because it directly addresses the construct of knowledge about primary sources, specifically the difference between primary sources and other types of information.

In contrast, if the test included a question like “What is the capital of England?” (which has nothing to do with primary sources), that would be an example of poor content validity because it isn’t relevant to the construct being measured.

The test as a whole has high content validity if:

  • The test’s questions cover every topic relevant to primary sources.
  • The test doesn’t contain questions that are irrelevant to knowledge of primary sources.

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What Is Ecological Validity? | Definition & Examples

Published on July 24, 2024 by Julia Merkus, MA Revised on May 20, 2025

Ecological validity refers to the extent to which the findings of a study can be generalized to real-world settings. It involves assessing whether the behaviors, conditions, and stimuli studied in research accurately reflect those in the natural environment.

Ecological validity example
A researcher wants to investigate memory recall. They draw a simple random sample of 100 participants. All participants are asked to memorize a list of random, unrelated words in a quiet laboratory setting. Later, they are tested on how many words they can remember.

This setup has high control over extraneous or confounding variables (which contributes to internal validity) but low ecological validity because it doesn’t reflect how people use memory in their everyday lives.

Ecological validity is a subtype of external validity, as is population validity. It’s mostly used in experimental designs in the field of psychology, medicine, and other fields that concern human behavior.

Tip
A generative AI tool like QuillBot’s AI Chat can help you think through possible validity concerns with research and is a helpful supplement to expert opinion and your own analysis.

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Emigrate vs Immigrate | Difference & Definitions

Published on July 2, 2024 by Julia Merkus, MA Revised on January 28, 2025

Emigrate means to “leave one’s country of residence to move to another,” whereas immigrate means to “enter a country intending to live there.”

The difference between these two words lies in context and perspective; if the focus is the departure point, use “emigrate.” But if it’s the arrival point, use “immigrate.”

Although the words sound similar, there’s a slight difference in their pronunciation. “Emigrate” is pronounced like “EH-muh-grayt,” where the initial “em” sounds similar to that of “ember.” On the other hand, “immigrate” is pronounced “IH-muh-grayt,” where the initial “im” sounds similar to that of “import.”

Examples: Emigrate in a sentence Examples: Immigrate in a sentence
My father emigrated from Cuba to the United States. She plans to immigrate to Amsterdam after obtaining her PhD.
They emigrated from Ireland in the 1990s in search of better opportunities. We decided to immigrate to Dubai to raise our family.
To escape social and political unrest, many citizens chose to emigrate. My mother immigrated to the United States from Panama.
Note
Migrate also has a similar meaning and refers to the act of moving from one place to another over a long or short distance, either temporarily or permanently (e.g., “Many birds migrate south during winter”).

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Affect vs Effect | Examples, Definition & Quiz

Published on July 2, 2024 by Julia Merkus, MA Revised on November 13, 2024

“Affect” and “effect” are related words that sound the same (homophones) but have different grammatical roles.

  • Affect (verb) refers to the act of influencing someone or something and causing it to change.
  • Effect (noun) describes the result of the influence or change itself.

 

Difference Rule
The sudden change in weather affected my outdoor plans for the weekend. The new tax policy will take effect at the beginning of the fiscal year.
The medicine may affect your ability to concentrate. The director used special effects to create stunning visuals in the movie.
Climate change can severely affect the ecosystems of fragile environments like coral reefs. The music’s soothing effect helped her relax and fall asleep.

Sometimes, “effect” is used as a verb and “affect” is used as a noun, but this is much less common than the usage described above.

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What Is a Collective Noun? | Examples & Definition

Published on July 2, 2024 by Julia Merkus, MA Revised on February 19, 2025

A collective noun is a type of noun used to refer to a group or collective of animals, people, or things. Collective nouns are treated as grammatically singular, even though they refer to a group.

Collective nouns include both common nouns (such as “family”) and proper nouns, like “Apple” or “QuillBot.”

Collective noun examples
The herd of elephants lumbered gracefully through the savanna.

Our team is working diligently to complete the project ahead of schedule.

The jury delivered a unanimous verdict in the courtroom.

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