Chapter 1: Introduction

It is my honor to be the editor of this volume on Validity. It is the result of work by ten of the eleven presenters who began this effort at the conference titled “The Concept of Validity: Revisions, New Directions and Applications,” October 9 and 10, 2008 and wrote a chapter for this book. The conference was sponsored by the Maryland State Department of Education and produced by the Maryland Assessment Research Center for Education Success (MARCES) at the University of Maryland, where I am the director. The chapters in this book are probably best read after having looked at some more basic material on validity, at least at the level presented in introductory textbooks such as that by Crocker and Algina (1986). In any case, I hope that this book gives the reader a chance to develop a wider perspective on what I believe to be the most important foundational area in Assessment. Validity becomes an issue whenever we ask: How can we assess a concept that we have? If the concept is 7th grade algebra, the question might be relatively easy to answer. If the concept is something like truth or beauty or internal locus of control, the question becomes much more difficult to answer.