Essay Sample on Construct Validity

Construct validity is specialized in defining how well a given experiment or a test would measure according to the already existing claims. Put differently; construct establishes the extent to which the operational definition of a variable would hold to reflect the actual theoretical definition of the concept. Construct in this case could be easily taken as an experiment that measures a theoretical concept such as the intelligence quotient of the human brain and the levels of emotional variations (Leary, Kelly, Cottrell, & Schreindorfer, 2013). Under such theoretical experimentation that has to be applied and whose results should be obtained via several uses of methods and instruments, a construct examination of how effective the experiment would be in such a given field would be necessary to ensure that the given procedures and measures deem appropriate to the subject matter. However, constructs do vary in their ease of measurement whereby some of the constructs would appear to be relatively cheap to measure while others would demand a quite sophisticated means of measurement whose essentiality require quite indirect analytical measurements. This paper shall hence carry out a detailed examination of the construct as one of the crucial elements of qualitative analysis.

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1.1 Construct under examination

It is always a good idea to put a construct under a viable examination to verify the validity of the given theoretical assumptions of a given phenomenon. Construct validity is well appropriated within the field of social sciences. The reason behind examining social sciences is due to the extent to which a higher percentage of subjectivity exists to the available concepts. However, there might lack a definite way that is universally accepted as the unit of measurement based on constructs. Also, even the fairly, and well-known constructs such as the IQ measure are prone to debates due to the methods and instruments that were used during the research process and the generality of arriving at a solution. As mentioned earlier, the ease of examining a construct would differ regarding the extremeness of the nature of a construct itself. Therefore, there exist two ways under which a construct can be examined;

Direct examination. In some cases, some attributes and elements of a construct can easily get measured through direct procedures. Some of examples of direct examination would include traits such as the height of a human being in centimeters or inches, weight in kilograms, and blood pressure in (mmHg).

Indirect examination. Certain cases would demand special ways and methods to carry out a validity examination on them. Attributes such as behavioral trends of a human being or any other animal would thus require sophisticated approaches to ensure that they are thoroughly examined and that the examination process has covered a large percentage in nearly all its attributes. For example, while measuring the extent of depression, a scale that is made up of ten to twenty items would be appropriate, whereby, the final score would be the total sum of all the given items. Smartly, in a case whereby the examination is carried to measure the extent of happiness in a person, a scale that consists of five to ten items would again deem appropriate for the entire assessment.

The principle motivation behind an analyst in investigating build legitimacy is to decide regardless of whether the deductions made about the results of the evaluation are significant. What's more, fills the need for an appraisal. Developing legitimacy is experimentally investigated by methods for Rasch and, as referenced above, is vital to any quality evaluation. At whatever point a specific credit must be estimated, build legitimacy is included, as it is the most relevant type of legitimacy to survey estimations. Specifically, construct validity is concerned with the viability of a test to check student information about the important points of concern. The test must be significant, proper, and used accurately, with the point of convergence being the reconciliation of proof that produces derivations about evaluation results. These overall concessions must be important, and dependable, and fill the need for the evaluation for construct legitimacy to achieve its objective.

1.2 Importance of examining the construct

There are several cases whereby constructs would fail to meet its original target of assessment and end up leading to the unintended deductions of a given phenomenon. Under such circumstances, therefore, it deems appropriate to have the construct undergo a reexamination process to determine its validity on that particular field of study. It, thus, goes with no question that conducting a construct validation process would hence accrue to so many advantages such as determining the faults that were committed or the important aspects that were omitted during the entire process of research.

Conducting a construct validation process does not only significant on the interpretation part of the construct but also its relevance of use. Thus, the process is multipurpose in that it does a critical examination on the usability and reliability of the construct both in the short and long run. Therefore, the entire test must be useful and at the same time reliable in a given way, for it to remain to hold on its validity status. During the examination process of a construct, it is important to determine the extent of the "item reliability index" to determine whether such items could undergo a replication process in case they were given to another sample group that has such similar abilities.

1.3 Consequences of failing to examine the construct

Having seen the importance of examining a construct as discussed above, similarly, there could exist several dangers if a construct is not evaluated to determine its reliability and validity. The main reason behind examining the construct is to ensure that all the possible threats based on the construct have been identified and the relevant solutions on the same obtained. The following types of threats would cripple the validity of the construct if the construct does not undergo a proper examination:

Hypothesis guessing. This form of a threat involves people making guess-worked responses which do not portray their natural traits for them to appear good, and smarter than it is the case. Thus, failure to examine the construct would lead to wrong inferences due to the lack of authentic reactions from the experiential participants. Therefore, if the critical experiment that is related to the critical field such as in nursing and clinical departments end up making inferences based on hypothetical guesswork, and there fails to be a form of evaluation, then the entire research process would eventually result to be a total mess. Thus, its reliability would hang within the jeopardy of the criticality in its deductive application.

Evaluation of Apprehension. Because people have the awareness that they are in a study, they hence make themselves appear good than it is the case. The impact is that the researcher would hence generate poor results that do not reflect the true color of the study.

Experimenter expectations. This type of threat involves the researcher biasing the results either consciously, or unconsciously, which impacts the results negatively. Thus, it deems appropriate to carry out a construct examination over such experiments.

2.1. Construct Participants.

Regularly a researcher would wish to know how a certain variable influences a few independent variables. At the point when a trial incorporates various ward factors, there is again a probability of vestige impacts. For instance, it is conceivable that estimating members' states of mind before estimating their apparent well-being could influence their apparent well-being or that estimating their apparent well-being before their dispositions could influence their temperaments. So the request where numerous reliant factors are estimated turns into an issue. One methodology is to quantify them in a similar request for all members-for the most part with the most significant one first so it can't be influenced by estimating the others. Another methodology is to offset, or deliberately fluctuate, the request where the reliant factors are evaluated. Besides, another conventional and standard approach to deal with that which includes various variables is to operationally characterize and gauge a similar construct, or firmly related ones, in multiple ways. Envision, for instance, that an analyst directs an analysis on the impact of day by day practice on pressure. The needy variable, stress, is a development that can be operationally characterized in various ways (Bauer, 2017). Therefore, the specialist may have members complete the paper-and-pencil Perceived Stress Scale and measure their dimensions of the pressure hormone cortisol. This is a case of the utilization of meeting activities. On the off chance that the scientist finds that the various measures are influenced by exercise similarly, at that point the person in question can be positive about the end that activity affects the more broad build of pressure.

2.2 Instruments

An instrument under quantitative research methodology can be defined as the general terminology that is used by the researchers as a measurement device. There exist, therefore, two major categories of instruments. That is; researcher-completed and subject-completed instruments. However, the two categories are distinguished by the instruments in which the researcher administers against those that are completed by the participants. It is, therefore, the responsibility of the researcher to choose which types of instruments that would work well for the given research questions. Examples of the researcher-completed instruments may include the following: rating scales, interview schedule or guides, use of flowcharts, use of tallying sheets, and use of performance checklists, observation forms, and time-and-motion-logs. On the other hand, subject-completed instruments would include such instruments as the use of questionnaires, self-checklists, personality inventories, attitude scales, achievement or aptitude tests, projective devices, and sociometric devices. In this case, a subject-completed instrument shall be put into consideration. That is the use of a questionnaire.

The procedure used to construct the instrument

Before an instrument gets to be constructed, several factors have to be put in place. In this case, we shall consider the use of a questionnaire as the instrument of data collection. The following is the procedure under which an instrument can be constructed.