To date, psychodiagnostics is involved in solving a wide range of problems

4. Validity of psychodiagnostic tools
After reliability, another key criterion for assessing the quality of methods
is validity. The question of validity is decided only after its sufficient reliability
has been established, since an unreliable technique cannot be valid. But the
most reliable technique without knowing its validity is practically useless.
Validity is a complex characteristic, including, on the one hand, information
about whether the methodology is suitable for measuring what it was created
for, and, on the other hand, what is its effectiveness, efficiency, and practical
usefulness.
The test is split into two equal parts. The basis of the method is the
conclusion that with a normal or close to normal distribution of scores throughout
the test, the execution of any random set of parts of the test gives a similar
distribution.
It should be noted that the question of validity is still one of the most
difficult. The most rooted definition of this concept is the one given in the book
by A. Anastasi: “The validity of a test is a concept that tells us what the test
measures and how well it does it.”
To assess reliability by the splitting method, two groups of tasks equivalent
in nature and degree of difficulty are selected (for example, even and odd (if
the tasks in the test are ranked according to the degree of subjective difficulty)).
Validity (from the English effective, suitable, valid) is a complex
characteristic of the methodology, which includes information about the field of
study of phenomena and the representativeness of the diagnostic procedure in
relation to them.
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conclusions are drawn using a specific methodology, i.e., “what we are studying”;
It is established by proving the correctness of the theoretical concepts underlying the test.
Appeal to conceptual validity is necessary in cases where the results of test measurements are
used not simply to predict behavior, but as the basis for conclusions about the extent to which
subjects have some specific psychological characteristic. Moreover, the measured psychological
characteristic cannot be identified with any observed feature of behavior, but is a theoretical
concept.
Types of validity
- about the degree of validity of the conclusions when using specific test scores or other
forms of assessment "how well the technique studies a mental phenomenon."
Construct validity is one of the main types of validity, which reflects the degree of
representation of the studied psychological construct in the test results. The degree of validity of
the theory underlying the creation of this test.
Validity is considered mandatory and includes data on the degree of consistency of test
results with other information about the person being examined, but obtained from other reliable
sources (theoretical expectations, observation, expert assessments, results of other methods, the
reliability of which has been established, etc.). Validity also describes the specific orientation of
the methodology (the contingent of subjects by age, educational level, socio-cultural affiliation,
etc.) and the degree of validity of the conclusions in the specific conditions of using the test.
In standard modern requirements for psychological tests , validity is defined as a set of
information about:
- regarding which groups of mental properties of a person can be
From a methodological point of view, validity is the main epistemological problem of
psychodiagnostics. Reliability is a necessary but not sufficient condition for validity. These two
concepts are closely related, but they do not intersect, because reliability is the stability of the
procedure relative to the object of study, and validity is the stability, but relative to the measured
properties of the subject. There is no directly proportional relationship between them and,
therefore, an increase in reliability does not indicate an increase in validity. Each technique has a
well-defined validity. Most methods allow you to determine the validity in relation to several mental
characteristics.
As can be seen from the above, the concept of validity includes a large amount of the most
diverse information about the test. Various categories of this information and ways of obtaining
them form the types of validity.
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Among the specific methods for determining construct validity, the following
stands out: comparison of the studied text with other methods, the construct
content of which is known. Correlations between the results of the two tests
should show that the developed test measures approximately the same area or
the same phenomenon as the reference method, since in this case, a high
degree of association between the two tests is not required. The purpose of the
construct validity procedure is to establish both the similarity of two methods
and their differences.