Which statement about construct validity is accurate?

Which statement about construct validity is accurate?

• A. It concerns whether a measure captures the intended construct, and strategies include convergent validity and known-groups validity.
• B. It is the same as reliability.
• C. It can only be assessed with factor analysis.
• D. It is irrelevant to measurement validity.

Answer: (A)

Construct validity asks whether a test truly measures the theoretical construct it intends to capture. It’s about whether the observed relationships among scores and other variables align with theory. Convergent validity shows the test correlates well with other measures of the same construct, reinforcing that they share the same underlying concept. Known-groups validity demonstrates the measure can distinguish between groups that should differ on the construct, providing another line of evidence that the test is tapping what it’s supposed to. Reliability, by contrast, concerns consistency of scores, not whether the test measures the right thing. Factor analysis can be part of validity work, but construct validity isn’t assessed only with it; multiple forms of evidence are used to support that the instrument targets the intended construct.

Construct validity asks whether a test truly measures the theoretical construct it intends to capture. It’s about whether the observed relationships among scores and other variables align with theory. Convergent validity shows the test correlates well with other measures of the same construct, reinforcing that they share the same underlying concept. Known-groups validity demonstrates the measure can distinguish between groups that should differ on the construct, providing another line of evidence that the test is tapping what it’s supposed to. Reliability, by contrast, concerns consistency of scores, not whether the test measures the right thing. Factor analysis can be part of validity work, but construct validity isn’t assessed only with it; multiple forms of evidence are used to support that the instrument targets the intended construct.