construct validity
What It Means
Construct validity is about whether you're actually measuring what you think you're measuring. It's the confidence that your metrics, surveys, or data collection methods truly capture the business concept you want to understand.
Why Chief AI Officers Care
Poor construct validity leads to making strategic decisions based on misleading data - like thinking you're measuring customer satisfaction when you're actually just measuring response speed, potentially resulting in misallocated resources and failed initiatives.
Real-World Example
A company uses 'time spent on website' as a measure of customer engagement, but discovers users are actually spending more time because the site is confusing and hard to navigate - the metric captured frustration, not engagement.
Common Confusion
People often assume that any data collection automatically measures what they intended, not realizing that metrics can be technically accurate while completely missing the underlying business concept they're trying to understand.
Industry-Specific Applications
See how this term applies to healthcare, finance, manufacturing, government, tech, and insurance.
Healthcare: In healthcare, construct validity ensures that clinical assessment tools, patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs), and...
Finance: In finance, construct validity ensures that risk models, credit scoring systems, and performance metrics actually measur...
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Includes:
- 6 industry-specific applications
- Relevant regulations by sector
- Real compliance scenarios
- Implementation guidance
Technical Definitions
NISTNational Institute of Standards and Technology
"the degree to which the application of constructs to phenomena is warranted with respect to the research goals and questions."Source: Wieringa,_Roel_J.
"Construct validation is involved whenever a test is to be interpreted as a measure of some attribute or quality which is not “operationally defined.” The problem faced by the investigator is, “What constructs account for variance in test performance?”"Source: cronbach_construct_1955
"Established experimentally to demonstrate that a survey distinguishes between people who do and do not have certain characteristics. It is usually established experimentally."Source: fink_survey_2010
"Establishing construct validity means demonstrating, in a variety of ways, that the measurements obtained from measurement model are both meaningful and useful."Source: jacobs_measurement_2023
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