Operationalization - Validity

3 important questions on Operationalization - Validity

What do external and internal validity mean and how does it differ from content, construct and criterion validity?

External validity; Can we generalize the results to the field?

Internal validity; Is the cause and effect trust worthy; between the treatment and outcomes; design and results.


It differs from content and criterion validity in such a way that the first two say something about the validity of the results. The latter say something about the validity within the research.

We can further distinguish construct validity into converging and discriminant validity. What is the difference between those two?

Converging validity means that different measuring instruments that measure the SAME theoretical concept must be POSITIVELY related to each other.

Discriminant validity means that the correlation between two DIFFERENT concepts measured must be LOW.

We can further distinguish criterion validity into competitive and predictive validity. What is the difference between those?

Competitive validity means that a measurement instrument is competitively valid if it predicts well the scores on a given criterion variable that is CURRENTLY being measured.

Predictive validity means that a measurement instrument is predictively valid if it predicts the scores on a criterion variable that lies in the FUTURE.

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