Validity, History of

Validity is arguably one of the most important, yet widely misunderstood, concepts in educational measurement, research, and evaluation. Misconceptions about validity may partly be due to the fact that the term validity has distinct meanings both between and within academic disciplines. Even within educational research, validity is described differently within the context of experimental design than it is within measurement. To make matters more complicated, the concept of validity has continued to evolve within the field of educational measurement, and it is this latter domain that is the focus of the present entry.

The concept of validity has changed from a simple typology believed to be a property of tests to a unified concept reflecting the extent to which evidence and theory support score-based interpretations and ...

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