CONSTRUCT-VALIDITY AND ACHIEVEMENT ASSESSMENT

The psychometric notion of construct validity has evolved greatly since its introduction by Cronbach and Meehl (1955). Its current status is to be found in a carefully formulated article by Messick (1989) in which he embeds construct validity in a realist conception of social science. In this article the authors examine several facets.of Messick's approach. They take issue with the emphasis placed on consequential validity as a component of construct validity, the inadequate treatment of the link between tests and scores, and the focus on construct validity in large-scale standardized test development. The authors show the profitability Of separating the construct-indicator link from the indicator-score link and suggest that although the latter is not always necessary, its treatment in the construct validity literature has generally been inadequate.