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CONSTRUCT VALIDITY IN PSYCHOLOGICAL TESTS
Lee J.Cronbach and Paul E.Meehl(1955)[1]
First published in Psychological Bulletin,52,281-302.
Validation of psychological tests has not yet been adequately

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conceptualized,as theAPA Committee on Psychological Tests learned when it undertook(1950-54)to specifywhat qualities should be investigated before a test is published.In order to makecoherent recommendations the Committee found it necessary to distinguish four typesof validity,established by different types of research and requiring differentinterpretation.The chief innovation in the Committee's report was the term constructvalidity.[2]This idea was first formulated by a subcommittee(Meehl and R.C.
Challman)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 bythe Committee(and by committees of two other associations)were published in theTechnical Recommendations(59).The present interpretation of construct validity is not"official"and deals with some areas where the Committee would probably not beunanimous.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 validityduring the preceding decade had shown a great deal of dissatisfaction with conventionalnotions of validity,and introduced new terms and ideas,but the resulting aggregation oftypes of validity seems only to have stirred the muddy waters.Portions of thedistinctions we shall discuss are implicit in Jenkins'paper,"Validity for what?"(33),Gulliksen's"Intrinsic validity"(27),Goodenough's distinction between tests as"signs"
and"samples"(22),Cronbach's separation of"logical"and"empirical"validity(11),Guilford's"factorial validity"(25),and Mosier's papers on"face validity"and"validitygeneralization"(49,50).Helen Peak(52)comes close to an explicit statement ofconstruct validity as we shall present it.
FOUR TYPES OF VALIDATION
The categories into which the Recommendations divide validity studies are:predictive
validity,concurrent validity,content validity,and construct validity.The first two of thesemay be considered together as criterion-oriented validation procedures.282The pattern of a criterion-oriented[p.282]study is familiar.The investigator is primarilyinterested in some criterion which he wishes to predict.He administers the test,obtainsan independent criterion measure on the same subjects,and computes a correlation.If
the criterion is obtained some time after the test is given,he is studying predictivevalidity.If the test score and criterion score are determined at essentially the same time,he is studying concurrent validity.Concurrent validity is studied when one test is
proposed as a substitute for another(for example,when a multiple-choice form ofspelling test is substituted for taking dictation),or a test is shown to correlate with somecontemporary criterion(e.g.,psychiatric diagnosis).Content validity is established by showing that the test items are a sample of a universein which the investigator is interested.Content validity is ordinarily to beestablisheddeductively,by defining a universe of items and sampling systematically within this
universe to establish the test.Construct validation is involved wheneve