What this means is that if an instrument is measuring cognitive load of 4th grade students learning computational thinking through the use of a tool such as Scratch, the content represents a variety of questions designed to measure cognitive load across the targeted goals (such as variable assignments and mathematical expressions).

Designed appropriately for the target population.

In a format appropriate for using the instrument, and.

Representative of the sample of the content being assessed,.

Face validity (or Content-related Evidence)įace validity is simply that–on its surface (or face) as reviewed by content specialists, are the items and questions on the instrument appropriate? An instrument that “passes” face validity would meet each of the following criteria, as defined by the experts, if when taken as a whole the items on the instrument are: Researchers are not typically expected to go to extraordinary lengths to demonstrate evidence of validity–however, those researchers with more extensive time and resources may. You can obtain deeper levels of evidence by evaluating it through different measures (described below), but you can only do so much with limited resources. Validity is a bit more subjective than reliability and there is no one pure method of “proving” validity–we can only gather evidence of validity. There may be correlations, but without further investigation of the instrument, automatic assumptions about the evidence of validity in the other subject (science) cannot be firmly made.įace validity and criterion validity are the most commonly used forms of testing for validity in evaluation instruments for education.

If an instrument is designed, tested, and measured for validity with 7th grade students in order to measure self-efficacy with respect to learning programming, the evidence of validity may differ if the same group of students were given the instrument for measuring self-efficacy with respect to learning science. The same thing applies to specific purposes from the results. The specific sub-group of the population used to validate the instrument may also be important-for instance, an instrument measuring motivation to learn CS among 7th grade students who are primarily White may not be valid for use with 7th grade students who are primarily African American. Without additional testing for validity for the high school student population, we cannot make that jump. What this means is that if a particular computational thinking test is designed, tested, and validated with 7th grade students, it does not mean automatically that it would also be valid for high school students. An evaluation instrument or assessment measure such as a test or quiz is said to have evidence of validity if we can make inferences about a specific group of people or specific purposes from the results.

Reliability of test in education