Social science research differs from research in fields such as physics and chemistry for many reasons. One reason is that the things social science research are trying to measure are intangible, such as attitudes, behaviors, emotions, and personalities. Whereas in physics you can use a ruler to measure distance, and in chemistry you can use a graduated cylinder to measure volume, in social science research you cannot pour emotions into a graduated cylider or use a ruler to measure how big someone's attitude is (no puns intended).

As a result, social scientists have developed their own means of measuring such concepts as attitudes, behaviors, emotions, and personalities. Some of these techniques include surveys, interviews, assessments, ink blots, drawings, dream interpretations, and many more. A difficulty in using any method to measure a phenomenon of social science is that you never know for certain whether you are measuring what you want to measure.

Validity is an element of social science research which addresses the issues of whether the researcher is actually measuring what s/he says s/he is. As an example, let us pretend we want to measure attitude. A psychologist by the name of Kurt Goldstein developed a way to measure "abstract attitude" by assessing several different abilities in brain injury patients, such as ability to separate their internal experience from the external world, ability to shift from one task to another, and the ability to recognize an oragnized whole, to break it into component parts, and then reorganize it as before. Carl Jung defined attitude a introversion and extraversion. Raymond Cattell defined attitude in three components: intensity of interest, interest in an action, and interest in action toward an object (Hall & Lindzey, 1978).

Are any of these things what you think of when someone mentions the word "attitude?"
Do any of these definitions of attitude seem like they are defining the same thing? Do          
they seem valid to you?                                                                                                                  

A definition of attitude that would seem to possess more validity to you might be the definition provided in the American Heritage Dictionary: "A state of mind or feeling with regard to some matter; disposition" (1987, p. 140). This definition of attitude may appear to you to be the most valid.

Validity in social science research has several different components - some people feel there are only three components of validity , and others feel there are four components of validity . On this page all four will be addressed. All of these facets of validity you would ideally want to establish for your research measure prior to administering it for your actual research project.

Face validity requires that your measure appears relevent to your construct to an innocent bystander, or more specifically, to those you wish to measure. Face validity can be established by your Mom - just ask her if she thinks your survey could adequately and completely assess someone's attitude. If Mom says yse, then you have face validity. However, you may want to take this one step further and ask individuals similar to those you wish to study if they feel the same way your Mom does about your survey. The reason for asking these people is that people can sometimes become resentful and uncooperative if they think they are being misrepresented to others, or worse, if they think you are misrepresenting yourself to them. For instance, if you tell people you are measuring their attitudes, but your survey asks them how much money they spend on alcohol, they may think you have lied to them about your study. Or if your survey only asks how they feel about negative things (i.e. if their car was stiolen, if they were beat up, etc.) they may think that you are going to find that these people all have negative attitudes, when that may not be true. So, it is important to establish face validity with your population of interest.

In order to have a valid measure of a social construct, one should never stop at achieving only face validity, as this is not sufficient. However one should never skip establishing face validity, because if you do not have it, you cannot achieve the other components of validity.

Content validity is very similar to face validity, except instead of asking your Mom or your target members of your population of interest, you must ask experts in the field (unless your Mom is an expert on attitude). The theory behind content validity, as opposed to face validity, is that experts are aware of nuances in the construct that may be rare or elusive of which the layperson may not be aware. For example, if you submitted your attitude survey to Kurt Goldstein for a content validity check, he may say you need to have something to assess whether your respondents can break something down into component parts, then resynthesize it, as this is an important aspect of attitude, and otherwise you have no content validity. For an example of a study where a content validity check was used for an attitude assessment, click here . Another example measures influences , and another measures impacts .

Many studies procede following content validity acvhievement, however this does not necessarily mean the measures used are entirely valid. Criterion validity is a more rigorous test than face or content validity. Criterion validity means your attitude assessment can predict or agree with constructs external to attitude. Two types of criterion validity exist:                                                           

Predictive validity- Can your attitude survey predict? For example, if someone scores high, indicating that they have a positive attitude, can high attitude scores also be predictive of job promotion? If you administer your attitude survey to someone and s/he rates high, indicating a posotive attitude, then alter that week s/he is fired from his/her job and his/her spouse divorces him/her, you may not have predictive validity.

Concurrent validity- Does your attitude survey give scores that agree with other things that go along with attitude? For example, if someone scores low, indicating that they ahve a negative attitude, are low attitude scores concurrent with (happen at the same time as) negative remarks from that person? High bolld pressure? If you administer your attutude survey to someone who is cheerful and smiling a lot, but they rate low, indicating a negative attitude, your survey may not have concurrent validity. For an extremely thorough example of research on the use of solution-focused group therapy with school children, which includes a concurrent validity check, click here .

                                                                             

Finally, the most rigorous validity test you can put your attitude survey through is the construct validity check. Do the scores your survey produce correlate with other related constructs in teh anticipated manner? For example, if your attitude survey has construct validity, lower attitude scores (indicating negative attitude) should correlate negatively with life satisfaction survey scores, nd positively with life stress scores. These other constructs do not necessarily have to be predictive or concurrent, however often times they are. For an in-depth discussion of construct validity, click here . To see what some of the threats are to construct validity, click here .

If your attitude survey has made it this far, you have a most valid construct! Congratulations!

For a discusson of validity issues in the field of industrial and organizational psychology, this link discusses in highly technical terms, issues relating to content validity in particular, that come up when trying to measure for promotion or hiring.

For a general and easy to read discussion on all types of measurement validity in social science research, this link is very helpful in clarifying differences between validity components.

For a discussion of validity issues in the field of psychology, this link discusses specific problems that coe up when dealing in the area of Emotional Intelligence.