Construct Validity: Advances in Theory and Methodology

By M. Strauss, Gregory T. Smith. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 2009

734 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Measures of psychological constructs are validated by testing whether they relate to measures of other constructs as specified by theory. Each test of relations between measures reflects on the validity of both the measures and the theory driving the test. Construct validation concerns the simultaneous process of measure and theory validation. In this chapter, we review the recent history of validation efforts in clinical psychological science that has led to this perspective, and we review five recent advances in validation theory and methodology of importance for clinical researchers. These are: the emergence of nonjustificationist philosophy of science; an increasing appreciation for theory and the need for informative tests of construct validity; valid construct representation in experimental psychopathology; the need to avoid representing multidimensional constructs with a single score; and the emergence of effective new statistical tools for the evaluation of convergent and discriminant validity.

Subfields: Applied Psychology, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Management Science and Operations Research

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0c25cee9ebc9feb5cc644f04394592db6f099273

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Citations in the corpus

Measuring mindfulness? An Item Response Theory analysis of the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale (2010, background): “…often have well-established nomothetic span (appropriate correlations with related and unrelated construct measures), they lack construct representationalism (psychological processes underlying responses to a task), an important component of establishing construct validity (Strauss & Smith, 2009).”
The COSMIN checklist for evaluating the methodological quality of studies on measurement properties: A clarification of its content (2010, background): “Hypotheses testing is an ongoing, iterative process [14].”
Explicating the Construct of Psychopathy: Development and Validation of a Conceptual Model, the Comprehensive Assessment of Psychopathic Personality (CAPP) (2012, methodology): “But measures are not merely tools for practice; they provide an additional means by which to validate conceptual models (Edwards & Bagozzi, 2000; Strauss & Smith, 2009).”
Making Intangibles “Tangible” in Tests of Resource-Based Theory (2011, methodology): “In this view, validation is enacted as a validity argument or coherent analysis of the evidence for and against theoretical claims that a measure represents the construct (Strauss & Smith, 2009).”
Job Burnout and Employee Engagement (2012, background): “For burnout-engagement research to advance, we thus believe theoretical clarity should be a guiding consideration (Strauss & Smith, 2009).”
Mind The Hype: A Critical Evaluation and Prescriptive Agenda for Research on Mindfulness and Meditation (2017, neutral): “In contrast, an alternative, nonjustificationist view suggests that a given measure is merely an approximation of a construct (Embretson, 1983; M. E. Strauss & Smith, 2009).”
Self-compassion is a better predictor than mindfulness of symptom severity and quality of life in mixed anxiety and depression. (2011, background): “The commonality in name of these scales does not necessarily mean that they measure the same construct (see Strauss & Smith, 2009).”
Assessment of mindfulness by self-report. (2018, methodology): “Current methods of construct validation emphasize measuring each facet of a multifaceted construct with a unidimensional subscale [15].”