Wearable sensors are becoming increasingly popular in organizational research. Although
validation studies that examine sensor data in conjunction with established social and
psychological constructs are becoming more frequent, they are usually limited for two reasons:
first, most validation studies are carried out under laboratory settings. Only a handful of studies
have been carried out in real-world organizational environments. Second, for those studies carried
out in field settings, reported findings are derived from a single case only, thus seriously limiting
the possibility of studying the influence of contextual factors on sensor-based measurements. This
article presents a validation study of expressive and instrumental ties across 9 relatively small R&D
teams. The convergent validity of Bluetooth (BT) detections is reported for friendship and adviceseeking ties under three organizational contexts: research labs, private companies and universitybased teams. Results show that, in general, BT detections correlated strongly with self-reported measurements. However, the organizational context affects both the strength of the observed correlation and its direction. Whereas advice-seeking ties generally occur in close spatial proximity and are best identified in university environments, friendship relationships occur at a greater spatial distance, especially in research labs. We conclude with recommendations for fine-tuning the validity of sensor measurements by carefully examining the opportunities for organizational embedding in relation to the research question and collecting complementary data through mixedmethod research designs
