Construct Validity in Psychological TestsVALIDATION of psychological tests has not yet been adequately concep tua1ized, as the APA Committee on Psychological Tests learned when it undertook to specify what qualities should be investigated before a test is published.In order to make coherent recommendations the Committee found it necessary to distinguish four types of validity, established by different types of research and requiring different interpre tation.The chief innovation in the Committee's report was the term constmct validity.*This idea was first formulated hy a subcommittee {Meehl and R. C. Cballman) studying how proposed recommendations would apply to projective techniques, and later modified and clarified by the entire Committee {Bordin, Challman, Conrad, Humphreys, Super, and the present writers).The statements agreed upon by tbe Committee (and by committees of two other associations) were published in the Technical Recommendations ( 59).The present interpretation of construct validity is not "official" and deals with some areas in which the Committee would probably not be unanimous.The present writers are solely responsible for this attempt to explain the concept and elaborate its implications.Identification of construct validity was not an isolated development.Writers on validity during the preceding decade had shown a great deal of dissatisfaction with conventional notions of validity, and intro dnced new terms and ideas, hut the resulting aggregation of types of * Referred to in a preliminary report ( 58) as cougruent validity.
Cronbach et al. (1955) studied this question.