The Metamorphosis to Test Validation

This article ]provides a history of test validation from the infancy of educational and psychological testing until the present, with emphasis on changes in our profession's conceptualization of test validation. This history indicates that test validation has increasingly taken on the meaning originally attached to construct validation. From the perspective of construct validation, the integration of psychological theory and research on one hand and psychometrics on the other is important for progress in both. Traditional content validation is also distinguished from test validation. Similarly, traditional criterion-related validation is shown as information for both decision makers and test validators rather than conclusive evidence of validity, as typically conceived. Other psychometric principles such as item analysis, reliability assessment and norms, are likewise shown to be relevant to test validation. Advances in psychometrics and statistical methodology as they affect test validation are briefly annotated.