correspondence between conclusions drawn from observations or measurements (often test results) and the intended purpose of the test. In other words, it is an assessment of how reasonable it is to assume that a test measures what it is intended to measure. In psychological assessment, construct validity helps determine how accurately test results reflect the measured characteristic or psychological construct. Scale scores are analyzed with regard to how successfully the test assesses what it is designed to assess. This term and approach were first proposed by Paul Meehl and Lee Cronbach in their seminal article Construct Validity in Psychological Tests (1955). The authors emphasized that construct validity was not something entirely new but represented a combination of many different types of validity related to theoretical concepts. They proposed the following three stages for evaluating construct validity:
1) formulation of a set of theoretical constructs and their interrelations;
2) development of methods for measuring hypothetical constructs proposed by theory;
3) empirical testing of hypothetical relationships.