What is content validity?

• A. The extent to which scores align with external criteria.
• B. How consistently a measure yields the same results over time.
• C. Whether the measure comprehensively covers all relevant aspects of the construct.
• D. How well the test correlates with a related construct.

Answer: (C)

Content validity is about whether the items in a measure actually cover the full domain of the construct you want to assess. It focuses on coverage and representativeness—do the questions reflect all the important facets of the concept, and do they avoid missing key parts or including irrelevant ones? For example, a scale intended to measure academic motivation should tap intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, persistence, and related aspects, not just one piece. In practice, content validity is often judged by experts who review how well each item fits the construct’s domain and may be quantified with indices that summarize experts’ judgments about relevance and coverage. Because it centers on how well the measure represents the construct’s domain, this item correctly identifies content validity as the best answer.

The other ideas refer to different psychometric properties: aligning with external criteria is about criterion validity, not whether the content covers the domain. Consistency over time is reliability, which concerns stability of scores rather than content coverage. Correlating with a related construct speaks to convergent validity (or broader construct validity), which deals with relationships to other measures rather than how comprehensively the items represent the construct itself.