Establishing validity and reliability (November 6, 2002)
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Dear Professor Mean, I need to establish validity and reliability of a
new measurement. How do I do this? --- Flustered Fred
Dear Flustered. Validity and reliability are two very dangerous words to
use, because they mean different things to different people. Here are some
issues to consider.
Face validity
Face validity is the extent to which your measurement appears valid to the
general public. Does the measurement make intuitive sense? A closely related
concept is content validity, the extent to which your measurement makes
intuitive sense to a group of experts in the area.
Construct validity
Construct validity is establishing that you are measuring what you think
you are measuring. You do this in two very different ways. First you
establish that your measure correlates well with what it should correlate
well with (convergent validity) and is uncorrelated with what it should be
uncorrelated with (discriminant validity).
A Plethora of Threats: A Mildly Amusing Guide for the Weary Student and
Anyone Else Encountering the How To's and What If's of Construct Validity.
Nicole M. Driebe. Accessed on November 4, 2002.
http://trochim.human.cornell.edu/tutorial/driebe/tweb1.htm
Criterion validity
Criterion validity is the extent to which your measurement correlates with
a gold standard. You can establish this two ways. First, you can see if your
measure predicts a future measure that indicates the same thing (predictive
validity). Second, you can see if your measure correlates well with other
concurrent measures which have been established as gold standards.
Example
Two large hospitals in the Netherlands studied four risk assessment scales
for pressure ulcers (BMJ 2002; 325: 797 (12 October)). Four separate scales
were applied to patients without pressure ulcers who were expected to stay at
least five days in the hospital. These patients were then followed for up to
12 weeks to see if a pressure ulcer did develop. They showed that all four
scales had poor predictive validity--they were unable to make accurate
predictions of which patients would develop pressure ulcers. The authors
noted that there had been minimal evaluation of these scales beyond expert
opinion and literature review.
Prospective cohort study of routine use of risk assessment scales
for prediction of pressure ulcers. Lisette Schoonhoven, Jeen R E
Haalboom, Mente T Bousema, Ale Algra, Diederick E Grobbee, Maria H Grypdonck,
and Erik Buskens. BMJ 2002; 325: 797.
[Abstract]
[Abridged text]
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[Full text]
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Further reading
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