It Was Nice to Be There: Construct Validity Then and Now

I appear to be one of the few persons who attended both the colloquium at Princeton titled Construct Validity in Psychological Measurement held in 1979 and the conference at Newport Beach titled Construct Validity: Issues and Opportunities held in 1990. As a discussant for both meetings, I have compared construct validity as seen by participants at the 1979 meetings with construct validity as seen by participants at the 1990 meeting. Comparisons are drawn according to conceptualizations of construct validity, construct va- lidity as scientific inquiry, and construct validity in assessment technology. A most noteworthy conclusion is that these three aspects no longer apply very well to the articles herein that were originally delivered at the 1990 meeting. Instead these articles show strongly that classification according to scientific inquiry versus applications is not possible. Such a conceptual gap no longer seems to exist for construct validity. Instead, these articles as well as the one by Hogan (1991) all emphasize large scale programmatic efforts characterized by approaches driven primarily by conceptualizations derived from construct validity. A secondary theme in these articles emphasizes analysis according to taxonomies at both the predictor and criterion levels. A primary conclusion from reviewing these articles is that construct validity no longer revolves around issues, but it clearly does connote opportunities for future research and applications.