Some Notes on the Contemporary Views of Validity in Psychological and Educational Assessment

Abstract

This paper aims at providing an analysis of views of validity as an important concept in psychological and educational assessment which has undergone transformation for several decades. The revolutionary change took place along with the release of the 1999 Standards followed by the 2014 Standards in which validity is associated with interpretation and use of test scores. With the new framework, several types of theoretical and empirical evidence are required to support the validation process. The results of the analysis show that the drastic change of the validity concept and the complicated process of validation have resulted in misunderstanding, misinterpretation, and misuse. Apart from different views which challenge the new concept, the argument-based approach has provided basis for new studies in many fields. Some strategies required to deal with complicated validation processes are suggested, along with some alternative perspective associated with the limitations of the standards.

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“…Validity is arguably the most crucial characteristic of a measurement model (Furr 2021), as it addresses the essential question of what measuring instruments truly assess (Bandalos 2018). This concern is closely linked with the classical definition of validity: the degree to which a test measures what it claims to measure (Bandalos 2018;Furr 2021;Sireci and Sukin 2013;Urbina 2014), aligning with the tripartite model still embraced by numerous scholars (Widodo 2018).…”