Content Validity

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Encyclopedia of Quality of Life and Well-Being Research
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Definition

Content validity refers to the degree to the content of a measurement instrument is relevant to, and representative of, the targeted construct it is designed to measure.

Description

Content validation, which plays a primary role in the development of any new instrument, provides evidence about the validity of an instrument by assessing the degree to which the instrument measures the targeted construct (Anastasia 1988). This enables the instrument to be used to make meaningful and appropriate inferences and/or decisions from the instrument scores given the assessment purpose (Messick 1989; Moss 1995). All elements of the instrument (e.g., items, stimuli, codes, instructions, response formats, scoring) that can potentially impact the scores obtained and the interpretations made should be subjected to content validation. There are four key aspects of content validity: domain definition, domain representation, domain relevance, and appropriateness of the test development...

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References

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Correspondence to Shayna Rusticus .

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Rusticus, S. (2021). Content Validity. In: Maggino, F. (eds) Encyclopedia of Quality of Life and Well-Being Research. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69909-7_553-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69909-7_553-2

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