{"id":647,"date":"2011-08-09T06:08:43","date_gmt":"2011-08-09T06:08:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/SallyJordan\/?p=647"},"modified":"2011-08-14T19:17:49","modified_gmt":"2011-08-14T19:17:49","slug":"are-we-assessing-what-we-think-we-are","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/SallyJordan\/?p=647","title":{"rendered":"Are we assessing what we think we are?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the past week (when I should have been working at Open University summer school, but got sent home ill) I haven’t felt up to doing a great deal, but I have managed quite a lot of reading. I’ve also tried to get a deeper understanding of some of the concepts in assessment which I once thought I understood – but the more I learn the less I feel I know. Validity <\/strong>is one of those concepts. So those of you who are experts, please ignore this use of my blog to get my own thoughts straight.<\/p>\n

At one level validity <\/strong>is simple – are you assessing what you think you are? (and, sadly, I think the answer is often ‘no’). As a physicist I spend quite a lot of time considering measurement uncertainties, which can be classified as random or systematic.\u00a0I think it is probably fair to say that increasing reliability<\/strong> is akin to reducing random uncertainties (which can be done, though not necessarily easily) whilst\u00a0 increasing validity is akin to reducing systematic uncertainties (much more slippery!)\u00a0. The problem is that is is very difficult to know if you are measuring or assessing the right thing.<\/p>\n

In\u00a0a similar way to the word ‘assessment’ itself (see my earlier posting \u00a0Adjectives of assessment <\/a>), the word ‘validity’ seems\u00a0frequently to follow an adjective i.e. it comes in different flavours.\u00a0I’ll just describe my understanding a few of the types of validity here. Some of the definitions are taken from other people, but I have edited them to reflect my own understanding.<\/p>\n

Concurrent validity<\/em> \u2013 the correlation of a new test with existing tests which purport to measure the same thing (but note that old and new may correlate but neither be valid).<\/p>\n

Construct validity<\/em> \u2013 if the test is intended to measure\u00a0e.g. \u2018verbal reasoning\u2019, \u2018numeracy\u2019 etc. is this what it is measuring?<\/p>\n

Content validity<\/em> \u2013 do the questions match the contents and learning\u00a0outcomes of the syllabus?<\/p>\n

Convergent<\/em> validity<\/em> is demonstrated when different measures of the same trait correlate highly.<\/p>\n

Discriminant validity<\/em>\u00a0describes the degree to which the measure does not correlate with other measures that it theoretically should not be correlated with.<\/p>\n

Face validity <\/em>\u2013 the acceptability of the test items to both test user and subject<\/p>\n

Predictive validity<\/em> \u2013 used when tests are used to make predictions. Predictive validity is represented as a correlation between the test score itself and a score of the degree of success in the predicted field.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the past week (when I should have been working at Open University summer school, but got sent home ill) I haven’t felt up to doing a great deal, but I have managed quite a lot of reading. I’ve also … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[151],"tags":[152,51,153,154,155,156,157,52,380],"class_list":["post-647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-validity","tag-concurrent-validity","tag-construct-validity","tag-content-validity","tag-convergent-validity","tag-discriminant-validity","tag-face-validity","tag-predictive-validity","tag-reliability","tag-validity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/SallyJordan\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/SallyJordan\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/SallyJordan\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/SallyJordan\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/SallyJordan\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=647"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/SallyJordan\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":666,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/SallyJordan\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647\/revisions\/666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/SallyJordan\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/SallyJordan\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/SallyJordan\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}