VALIDITY

Validity is the degree to which an instrument measures what it is

supposed to measure. When researchers develop an instrument to
measure hopelessness, how can they be sure that resulting scores validly
reflect this construct and not something else, like depression?
Reliability and validity are not dependent qualities of an instrument
A measuring device that is unreliable cannot be valid. An instrument
cannot validly measure an attribute if it is inconsistent and inaccurate. An
unreliable instrument contains too much error to be a valid indicator of the
target variable. An instrument can be reliable without being valid.
Suppose we had the idea to assess patients anxiety by measuring the
circumstance of their wrists. We could obtain highly accurate, consistent,
and precise measurements of wrist circumstances, but such measures
would not be valid indicators of anxiety. Thus, the high reliability of an
instrument provides no evidence of its validity; low reliability of a measure
is evidence of low validity.
Like reliability, validity has different aspects and assessment
approaches. Unlike reliability, however an instruments validity is difficult
to establish. There are no equations that can easily be applied to the
scores of hopelessness scale to estimate how good a job the scale is doing
in measuring the critical variable.
Face Validity: It refers to whether the instrument looks as it is measuring
the appropriate construct. Although face validity should not be considered
primary evidence for an instruments validity, it is helpful for a measure to
have face validity if other types of validity have also been demonstrated.
For example, it might be easier to persuade people to participate in an
evaluation if the instruments being used have face validity.
Content Validity: Concerns the degree to which an instrument has an
appropriate sample of items for the construct being measured. Content
validity is relevant for both affective measures (i.e., measures relating to
feelings, emotions, and psychological traits) and cognitive measures.
For cognitive measures, the content validity question is, how
representative are the questions on this test of the universe of questions
on this topic? For example, suppose we are testing students knowledge
about major nursing theories. The test would not be content valid if it
omitted questions about, for example, Orems self-care theory.
Content validity is also relevant in the development of affective
measures. Researchers designing a new instrument should begin with

conceptualization might come from rich first-hand knowledge,

exhaustive literature review, or findings from a qualitative inquiry.

an

Face validity: The extent to which a measuring instrument looks as it is

measuring what it purports to measure.
Content Validity: The degree to which the items in an instrument
adequately represent the universe of content for the concept being
measured.