Why is validity important?
Validity is the strength of the conclusion, inference and proposition. Validity is the best available proof for the truth or false nature of the conclusion. For example, certain rules were laid down for the students to be regular for the classes. After the policies were established, there was increase in attendance of the students. Now, validity refers to the various aspects of looking at the increase in student attendance due to the introduction of new policies. The different aspects of validity checking are conclusion validity (relation between program and outcome), internal validity (to check the causal relation between the program and outcome), construct validity (check the causal relation between program and outcome using reliable concepts) and external validity (generalize the results to outcomes of other similar situations).
Validity is important as an individual has to be tested for his talents, effectiveness, hard work, confidence and presentation skills. Validity will be done perfectly if the test conducted for the individual is designed effectively in order to serve the purpose of assessing the individual. If the test conducted is apt for the person to be evaluated and can assess his actual ability then validity of the assessment will be good and perfect. Now, the validated individual can be given the job if he deserves or rejected if he does not deserve. Hence, validation of the results is more important and essential.
If a process or a test or a procedure or an activity is reliable, then the results can be measured in terms of validity. By testing the validity, the ability of the person in using the procedure or test can be determined. For example, if reliable questions were asked in the test in order to examine the efficiency of the students, then based on the success or failure of the student, the validity of the result will be analyzed. But, the questions must be highly reliable to end up with perfect validation. For anything to be valid, firstly it must be reliable to be able to measure the value properly. There might be several reliable methods, validation of all of them is important to identify the most reliable method.
Leave a Reply