Scribd
Upload
261 views4 pages

Three Types of Validity.

The document discusses three types of validity in assessments: 1) Content validity refers to how well an assessment represents all facets of the domain being assessed. An exam would have low content validity if it only covered a small portion of the material. 2) Criterion-oriented validity examines the relationship between test scores and a measurable criterion, such as predicting student performance based on a reading test score. 3) Construct validity defines abstract concepts like intelligence or empathy in a measurable way and examines relationships between constructs, such as how increased anxiety may decrease fluency. Properly defining constructs is important for validity.

Uploaded by

Shireen Xada
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
261 views4 pages

Three Types of Validity.

The document discusses three types of validity in assessments: 1) Content validity refers to how well an assessment represents all facets of the domain being assessed. An exam would have low content validity if it only covered a small portion of the material. 2) Criterion-oriented validity examines the relationship between test scores and a measurable criterion, such as predicting student performance based on a reading test score. 3) Construct validity defines abstract concepts like intelligence or empathy in a measurable way and examines relationships between constructs, such as how increased anxiety may decrease fluency. Properly defining constructs is important for validity.

Uploaded by

Shireen Xada
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 4

Shireen Zada

BS 8th

Validity:
Introduction:
The term validity has varied meanings depending on the context
in which it is being used. Validity generally refers to how
accurately a conclusion, measurement, or concept corresponds to
what is being tested. Validity is defined as the extent to which an
assessment accurately measures what it is intended to measure.
Let me explain this concept through a real-world example. If you
weigh yourself on a scale, the scale should give you an accurate
measurement of your weight. If the scale tells you weigh 150
pounds and you actually weigh 135 pounds, then the scale is not
valid. The same can be said for assessments used in the
classroom. If an assessment intends to measure achievement
and ability in a particular subject area but then measures
concepts that are completely unrelated, the assessment is not
valid.

Three types of validity:


There are three types of validity (1) content validity, (2 Criterion-
oriented validity, (3) construct validity.

1) Content validity:
Definition:
Content validity refers to the extent to which an assessment
represents all facets of tasks within the domain being assessed.
Content validity answers the question: Does the assessment
cover a representative sample of the content that should be
assessed?
Example:
For example, if you gave your students an end-of-the-year
cumulative exam but the test only covered material presented in
the last three weeks of class, the exam would have low content
validity. The entire semester worth of material would not be
represented on the exam.

Criterion-oriented validity:
When considering criterion-oriented validity, the tester is interested in
the relationship between a particular test and a criterion to which we
wish to make predictions. For example, I may wish to predict from
scores on a test of second language academic reading ability whether
individuals can cope with first-semester undergraduate business studies
texts in an English-medium university. What we are really interested in
here is the criterion, whatever it is that we wish to know about, but for
which we don’t have any direct evidence. In the example above we
cannot see whether future students can do the reading that will be
expected of them before they actually arrive at the university and start
their course. In this case the validity evidence is the strength of the
predictive relationship between the test score and that performance on
the criterion. Of course, it is necessary to decide what would count as
‘ability to cope with’ – as it is something that must be measurable.
Defining precisely what we mean by such words and phrases is a central
part of investigating validity.

(3) Construct validity:


To understand the construct validity we should understand the
term construct. The easiest way to understand the term construct
is to think of the many abstract nouns that we are use on daily
basis. Consider these, the first of which we have already touched on
 Love
 Intelligence
 Anxiety
 Thoughtfulness
 Fluency
 Aptitude
 Extroversion
 Timidity
 Persuasiveness
 Empathy.

As we use these terms in everyday life we have no need to define them.


We all assume that we know what they mean, and that the meaning is
shared. So we can talk with our friends about how much empathy
someone we know may have, or how fluent a speaker someone is. But
this is to talk at the level of everyday concepts. For a general term to
become a construct, it must have two further properties. Firstly, it must
be defined in such a way that it becomes measurable. In order to
measure ‘fluency’ we have to state what we could possibly observe in
speech to make a decision about whether a speaker is fluent. It turns out
that many people have different definitions of fluency, ranging from
simple speed of speech, to lack of hesitation (or strictly ‘pauses’,
because ‘hesitation’ is a construct itself), to specific observable features
of speech). Secondly, any construct should be defined in such a way that
it can have relationships with other constructs that are different. For
example, if I generate descriptions of ‘fluency’ and ‘anxiety’ I may
hypothesize that, as anxiety increases, fluency will decrease, and vice
versa. If this hypothesis is tested and can be supported, we have the very
primitive beginnings of a theory of speaking that relates how we perform
to emotional states.

You might also like