Validity In-Depth

Construct Validity – Whether your measure actually measures what it is suppose to measure

  • Worry about systematic error, other conceptual variables that affect measure

Face Validity – Whether content of measure appears to reflect content being measured

  • Useful measure to see whether test measures what it is suppose to measure
  • Not always useful, for example, when measuring undesirable trait
    e.g., Racism, people might not answer items accurately
  • Some valid measure lack face validity
    e.g., REM measure dreaming but has no face validity
  • Easiest way to assess construct validity

Content Validity – Degree to which measured variable appears to have adequately sample from potential domain of question that relate to conceptual variable of interest

e.g., Exam with one chapter; IQ test with only math questions → both have low content validity

∴ Face and Content Validity should be used in initial stages of question development; the ones below are superior

Criterion Validity (more objective)

Predictive Validity – Extent to which measure predicts future behaviour

e.g., GRE has predictive validity

  • Correlate score on measure with future behaviour that measure should predict

Concurrent Validity – Extent to which measure correlates with behaviour at the same time as measure of interest

  • Be able to distinguish one group with another who are similar
    e.g., Distinguish between Bi-Polar and Depression
  • Involves correlation measure with behaviour

Convergent Validity – Score related to score on other measure of same or similar concepts

Discriminant Validity – Extent to which measures are unrelated to scores of measure on different concepts

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