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Construct Validity

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Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences

Definition

The purpose of construct validation is to evaluate whether scores on a set of items form a suitable indicator for the intended construct (also known as factorial or structural validity), and whether the associations between the test score and other variables follow a theoretically expected pattern (also known as convergent and discriminant validity). To this end, the systematic testing of a-priori hypotheses regarding the relation between construct and indicators or test scores and other variables provides evidence supporting the test score interpretation.

Introduction

The term construct validity was coined by Meehl and Challman who at that time were members of an APA committee on Psychological Tests (cited from Cronbach and Meehl 1955). Generally, construct validity of a test refers to the extent in which the test measures the intended construct. As the true score of a person for the intended construct is generally unknown in psychology, this assumption cannot be put under...

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References

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Correspondence to Matthias Ziegler .

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Wehner, C., Roemer, L., Ziegler, M. (2019). Construct Validity. In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Shackelford, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_1288-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_1288-1

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