Is Construct Validation Valid?

Philosophy of Science 83 (5):1098-1109 (2016)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

What makes a measure of well-being valid? The dominant approach today, construct validation, uses psychometrics to ensure that questionnaires behave in accordance with background knowledge. Our first claim is interpretive—construct validation obeys a coherentist logic that seeks to balance diverse sources of evidence about the construct in question. Our second claim is critical—while in theory this logic is defensible, in practice it does not secure valid measures. We argue that the practice of construct validation in well-being research is theory avoidant, favoring a narrow focus on statistical tests while largely ignoring relevant philosophical considerations.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,221

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Conjoint construct validation.Albert Yonas & Lawrence R. Carleton - 1978 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 1 (2):206-206.
Development and Validation of The CEU-Lopez Critical Thinking Test.Marcos Y. Lopez & Maricris V. Asilo - 2014 - Inquiry: Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines 29 (1):32-55.
Is the construct for human affiliation too narrow?Nancy Nyquist Potter - 2005 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 28 (3):363-364.
Development and Validation of The CEU-Lopez Critical Thinking Test.Marcos Y. Lopez & Maricris V. Asilo - 2014 - Inquiry: Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines 29 (1):32-55.

Analytics

Added to PP
2017-09-14

Downloads
107 (#151,005)

6 months
24 (#97,377)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author Profiles

Dan Haybron
Saint Louis University
Anna Alexandrova
Cambridge University

Citations of this work

Can Machines Read our Minds?Christopher Burr & Nello Cristianini - 2019 - Minds and Machines 29 (3):461-494.
Construct validity in psychological tests – the case of implicit social cognition.Uljana Feest - 2020 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 10 (1):1-24.
Measurement in Science.Eran Tal - 2015 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Can aging research generate a theory of health?Jonathan Sholl - 2021 - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 43 (2):1-26.
Happiness.Dan Haybron - forthcoming - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

View all 28 citations / Add more citations

References found in this work

Old and New Problems in Philosophy of Measurement.Eran Tal - 2013 - Philosophy Compass 8 (12):1159-1173.
Subjective measures of well-being: Philosophical perspectives.Erik Angner - 2009 - In Harold Kincaid & Don Ross (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Economics. Oxford University Press. pp. 560--579.

Add more references