Improving Construct Measurement In Management Research: Comments and a Quantitative Approach for Assessing the Theoretical Content Adequacy of Paper-and-Pencil Survey-Type Instruments

A cursory review of the measurement practices found in four diverse management journals is briefly reported, suggesting that the current authors’ concerns about serious measurement deficiencies in at least some subdomains of the field may not be groundless. Then, it is suggested that the demonstration of instrument content adequacy be demanded as an initial step toward construct validation by all studies which use new, modified, or previously unexamined measures. Although adequate content is a necessary pre-condition for instrument validity, there are no well-established quantitative methods for examining content adequacy. Consequently, the main focus of this article is to propose a new approach for the quantitative assessment of content adequacy and to illustrate this approach by evaluating a commonly-used job satisfaction scale. Problems in and suggestions for the use of this method a represented, along with implications and potential new applications of the method for management research.