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Cited by 862

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 3 of the 3 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Test validity and the ethics of assessment.

Messick, Samuel·1980·American Psychologist

Abstract

Questions of the adequacy of a test as a measure of the characteristic it is interpreted to assess are answerable on scientific grounds by appraising psychometric evidence, especially construct validity. Questions of the appropriateness of test use in proposed applications are answerable on qthical grounds by appraising potential social consequences of the testing. The first set of answers provides an evidential basis for test interpretation, and the second set provides a consequential basis for test use. In addition, this article stresses (a) the importance of construct validity for test use because it provides a rational foundation for predictiveness and relevance, and (b) the importance of taking into account the value implications of test interpretations per se. By thus considering both the evidential and consequential bases of both test interpretation and test use, the roles of evidence and social values in the overall validation process are illuminated, and test validity comes to be based on ethical as well as

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Metadata

Authors
Messick, S.
Venue
American Psychologist
Published
1980-11
Volume
35
Issue
11
Pages
1012-1027
ISSN
  • 0003-066X (ISSN-L)
  • 1935-990X
OpenAlex
W1971144995
Cited by
862
References
3
FWCI
23.22
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Test validity and the ethics of assessment. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1037/0003-066x.35.11.1012
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Messick, S. (1980). Test validity and the ethics of assessment. American Psychologist. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066x.35.11.1012

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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.