Validation of psychological tests has not yet been adequately conceptualized, as the APA Committee on Psychological Tests learned when it undertook (1950-54) to specify what qualities should be investigated before a test is published. In order to make coherent recommendations the Committee found it necessary to distinguish four types of validity, established by different types of research and requiring different interpretation. The chief innovation in the Committee's report was the term construct validity.[2] This idea was first formulated by a subcommittee (Meehl and R. C. Challman) studying how proposed recommendations would apply to projective techniques, and later modified and clarified by the entire Committee (Bordin, Challman, Conrad, Humphreys, Super, and the present writers). The statements agreed upon by the Committee (and by committees of two other associations) were published in the Technical Recommendations (59). The present interpretation of construct validity is not "official" and deals with some areas where the Committee would probably not be unanimous. The present writers are solely responsible for this attempt to explain the concept and elaborate its implications.

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Construct validity in psychological tests.

Doubts about a maxim like Hume’s have a variety of historical sources. Some date back as far as Descartes’s claim that, since he can conceive himself in a purely mental condition, his essence is only to think. “How does it follow,” Arnauld asks, “from the fact that he is aware of nothing else belonging to his essence, that nothing else does in fact belong to it?” Others are as recent as the discovery by Kripke and Putnam of necessary truths knowable only a posteriori: May 24, 2004 Is Conceivability a Guide to Possibility? S. Yablo

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Is conceivability a guide to possibility

This is an attempt to exorcize the ghost called “consciousness” or “the observer” from quantum mechanics, and to show that quantum mechanics is as “objective” a theory as, say, classical statistical mechanics. My thesis is that the observer, or better, the experimentalist, plays in quantum theory exactly the same role as in classical physics. His task is to test the theory.

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Quantum Mechanics without “The Observer”

Evidence-based medicine (EBM) makes use of explicit procedures for grading evidence for causal claims. Normally, these procedures categorise evidence of correlation produced by statistical trials as better evidence for a causal claim than evidence of mechanisms produced by other methods. We argue, in contrast, that evidence of mechanisms needs to be viewed as complementary to, rather than inferior to, evidence of correlation. In this paper we first set out the case for treating evidence of mechanisms alongside evidence of correlation in explicit protocols for evaluating evidence. Next we provide case studies which exemplify the ways in which evidence of mechanisms complements evidence of correlation in practice. Finally, we put forward some general considerations as to how the two sorts of evidence can be more closely integrated by EBM.

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Mechanisms and the Evidence Hierarchy

The estimation of the parameters of dosage response curves by the standard probit method is an iterative process beginning with approximations to the parameters and using one or more cycles of computations to “improve” these estimates until they converge. The present paper gives a table and method for computing the maximum likelihood solution which converges more rapidly than the standard probit method. A procedure is presented for obtaining more accurate initial approximations, and the problem of the bias of the maximum likelihood estimates in small samples is considered.

John H. Smith

Papers

Probability and Induction.

The Theory of Probability: An Inquiry into the Logical and Mathematical Foundations of the Calculus of Probability.

Business and economic statistics

Statistical Adjustment of Data