VALIDITY AND ITS TYPES
VALIDITY
“Validity is the extent to which a test
measures what it claims to measure.”
“It is vital for a test to be valid in order for the
results to be accurately applied and
interpreted.”
Internal Validity
• It is basically the extent to which a study is free from flaws and that
any differences in a measurement are due to an independent
variable and nothing else.
• Internal validity is the extent to which a piece of evidence supports a
claim about cause and effect, within the context of a particular study.
External Validity
• It is the extent to which the results of a research study can be
generalized to different situations, different groups of people,
different settings, different conditions, etc.
TYPES OF EXTERNAL VALIDITY
Population Validity
I t refers to the extent to which the findings can be
generalized to other populations of people.
Ecological Validity
• I t refers to the extent to which thefindings can be
generalized beyond the present situation.
Face Validity
• It is a simple form of validity where you apply a superficial and
subjective assessment of whether or not your study or test
measures what it is supposed to measure
• It is a measure of how representative a research project is 'at face
value,' and whether it appears to be a good project.
• The degree to which a procedure, especially a psychological test or
assessment, appears effective in terms of its stated aims.
•EXAMPLE:
•People might have negative reactions to an intelligence test that did
not appear to them to be measuring their intelligence
FACE VALIDITY
CONTENT VALIDITY
Content Validity
• It is the extent to which the measurement method covers
the entire range of relevant behaviors, thoughts, and
feelings that define the construct being measured.
• Content validity, sometimes called logical or rational
validity, is the estimate of how much a measure
represents every single element of a construct.
• The extent to which the items on a test are fairly
representative of the entire domain the test seeks to
measure.
• Refers to how well a test measures the behavior for which
it is intended.
EXAMPLES
•One’s attitude toward an object is considered to
consist of thoughts about the object, feelings
about the object, and behaviors toward the
object.
•If test anxiety is thought to include both nervous
feelings and negative thoughts, then any
measure of test anxiety should cover both of
these aspects.
•A course exam has good content validity if it
covers all the material that students are
supposed to learn and poor content validity if it
does not.
CONSTRUCT VALIDITY
Construct validity ensures that the method of
measurement matches the construct you want to
measure.
To achieve construct validity, you have to ensure that
your indicators and measurements are carefully
developed based on relevant existing knowledge.
Constructs can be characteristics of individuals, such as
intelligence, obesity, job satisfaction, or depression.
EXAMPLE
We cannot measure “depression” directly rather based
on a collection of symptoms such as low self-esteem
and decreased energy levels.
For developing a questionnaire to diagnose
depression, we need to know: does the questionnaire
really measure the construct of depression? Or is it
actually measuring the respondent’s mood, self-
esteem?
CRITERION VALIDITY:
It is the extent to which people’s scores are
correlated with other variables or extent to which a
measure is related to an outcome.
Example:
An IQ test should correlate positively with school
performance. An occupational aptitude test should
correlate positively with work performance.
TYPES OF CRITERION VALIDITY:
Concurrent Validity
When the criterion is something that is happening or being
assessed at the same time as the construct of interest, it is
called concurrent validity.
It can also refer to when a test replaces another test (i.e. because
it’s cheaper). For example, a written driver’s test replaces an in-
person test with an instructor.
Predictive Validity
Predictive Validity involves testing a group of subjects for a
certain construct, and then comparing them with results obtained
at some point in the future.
If the test accurately predicts what it is supposed to predict. For
example, the SAT exhibits predictive validity for performance in
college.
