A Level Psychology OCR Practice Exam

What aspect does content validity evaluate in a psychological test?

1. Accuracy of outcome measurement

2. Coverage of relevant parts of the construct

3. Comparison to a gold standard

4. Ability to predict future outcomes

The correct answer is: Coverage of relevant parts of the construct

Content validity evaluates how well a psychological test covers the relevant parts of the construct it aims to measure. This means that when a test is said to have good content validity, it indicates that the items or questions included are representative of the entire domain of the construct. For example, if a test is designed to measure intelligence, good content validity would ensure that the test includes a range of questions that adequately reflect different aspects of intelligence, such as verbal reasoning, mathematical ability, and spatial reasoning. In other choices, while accuracy of outcome measurement and prediction of future outcomes are important attributes for psychological assessments, they relate more to other types of validity, such as criterion-related validity. Furthermore, comparison to a gold standard typically pertains to the way a test is validated against an established benchmark, rather than directly assessing the relevance and representativeness of the test content itself. Therefore, the emphasis of content validity remains on the thorough representation of the construct being measured.