Validation Crisis
Psych 🧠- 142/200
Hello,
Today, I have to share about The Validation Crisis.
Would you believe it’s 22nd January already going in 2022?
What is it?
Replicability is only one necessary feature of a healthy science. Another necessary feature of a healthy science is the use of valid measures.
This feature of a healthy science is as obvious as the need for replicability. To test theories that relate theoretical constructs to each other (e.g., construct A influences construct B for individuals drawn from population P under conditions C), it is necessary to have valid measures of constructs.
However, it is unclear which criteria a measure has to fulfil to have construct validity.
Thus, even successful and replicable tests of a theory may be false because the measures that were used lacked construct validity.
Why do I need to know?
Some of the measures that are currently used in psychology are likely to have insufficient construct validity. If this was the decade of replication, the 2020s may become the decade of validation, and maybe the 2030s may produce the first replicable studies with valid measures.
Maybe this is overly optimistic, given the lack of improvement in validation research since Cronbach and Meehl (1955) outlined a program of construct validation research. Ample citations show that they were successful in introducing the term, but they failed in establishing rigorous criteria of construct validity.
References & Studies: -
https://replicationindex.com/2019/02/16/the-validation-crisis-in-psychology/
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