Keith Marcus congratulates Almond et al. on an interesting article bringing together two topics that are important to the field of testing. He states that some aspects of the exposition came across as not yet fully developed, as if the manuscript had been hurried to press. In this commentary, he attempts to expand aspects of the article, which he…

Validation research for educational achievement tests is often limited to an examination of intended test score interpretations. This article calls for an expansion of validation research in three dimensions. First, validation must attend to actual test use and its consequences, not just score meaning. Second, validation must attend to unintended…

In "How Is Testing Supposed to Improve Schooling," Haertel describes seven broad mechanisms whereby testing is used to improve schooling (this issue). The first four are direct mechanisms, meaning that "test scores are taken as indicators of some underlying construct and on that basis scores are used to guide some decision or draw some…

In his thoughtful focus article, Haertel (this issue) pushes testing experts to broaden the scope of their validation efforts and to invite scholars from other disciplines to join them. He credits existing validation frameworks for helping the measurement community to identify incomplete or nonexistent validity arguments. However, he notes his…

This paper presents the author's critique to Paul E. Newton's article titled "Clarifying the consensus definition of validity." In his article, Newton not only clarifies but also redefines the consensus definition of validity. In this redefinition he omits the term "construct" and introduces the term "measurement." Both omission and introduction…

Paul E. Newton's article is valuable in many ways, especially for clarifying confusions and inconsistencies in the assessment business. Most importantly, he points out confusions that persist and where open discussion will help us understand what we say and what we mean to say. But I will focus here on the only faults I find in the article: three…

This article presents the author's response to Paul E. Newton's paper titled "Clarifying the Consensus Definition of Validity" ("Measurement: Interdisciplinary Research and Perspectives," 2012). Newton's paper offers an interesting and constructive discussion about how people think about validity. In this reaction, the author comments on some of…

Paul E. Newton provides an insightful and scholarly overview of central issues in validity theory. As he notes, many of the conceptual problems in validity theory derive from the fact that the word "validity" has two meanings. First, it indicates "whether a test measures what it purports to measure." This is a factual claim about the psychometric…

Paul E. Newton is to be commended for addressing as challenging a topic as the clarification of the concept of validity. The impetus for this foray is Newton's judgment that, despite decades of development, the definition and elaboration of the term test validity in the 1999 "Standards" retains sufficient ambiguity to permit, if not invite, both…

What is validity? A simple question but apparently one with many answers, as Paul Newton highlights in his review of the history of validity. The current definition of validity, as entertained in the 1999 "Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing" is indeed a consensus, one between the classical notion of attributes, and measures…

In his article, Paul E. Newton has conducted a review of selected perspectives on validity theory with the goal of disambiguating the definition of validity and describing a consensus definition of validity. Newton provides a nuanced discussion of the evolution of the concept of validity over the years. His Focus article has two major goals: (1)…

Paul E. Newton argues in favor of a conception of validity, viz, "the consensus definition of validity," according to which the extension of the predicate "is valid" is a subset of "assessment-based decision-making procedure[s], which [are] underwritten by an argument that the assessment procedure can be used to measure the attribute entailed by…

Paul E. Newton's article on the consensus definition of validity tackles a number of big issues and makes a number of strong claims. I agreed with much of what he said, and I disagreed with a number of his claims, but I found his article to be consistently interesting and thought provoking (whether I agreed or not). I will focus on three general…

Considering consequences in the evaluation of validity is not new although it is still debated by Paul E. Newton and others. The argument-based approach to validity entails an interpretative argument that explicitly identifies the proposed interpretations and uses of test scores and a validity argument that provides a structure for evaluating the…

This paper presents the authors' critique on "Clarifying the Consensus Definition of Validity" by Paul E. Newton (this issue). There are serious differences of opinion regarding the topic of validity. Newton is aware of these differences, as made clear by his choice of references and particularly his effort to respond to the various Borsboom…