Face Validity

Face validity refers to conclusions drawn from an initial and superficial assessment of a research design, concept, or any other idea being examined. In research design, face validity is the least reliable validity judgment and should only serve as a preliminary screening of the concept or design being examined. However, if face validity cannot be established, then it is not likely that any of the more rigorous validity criteria can apply.

As an idea, face validity can fulfill a screening function that enables the reader to make a preliminary judgment as to the worth of the design, data, or concept under consideration. Face validity, therefore, is judged from the context of the reader’s knowledge, experience, and attention.

Face validity can show surface connections between parts of a concept or design but might also fail to reveal such connections whether they actually exist. It is therefore not possible to claim a logical relationship between face validity and other forms of validity (i.e., external and internal validity), although correlations between face validity and other forms of validity are possible.

Judgments about face validity usually depend on the knowledge of the reader. For example, the more a concept or design is within the reader’s experience, the more likely it will be that the reader will judge the test to have a high level of face validity. Face validity is also characterized by its chief limitation of being a judgment-at-a-glance rather than an in-depth analysis of the research design, data, and results.

In sum, face validity is considered an initial way of establishing the acceptability of the subject under examination and is preliminary to deeper and more rigorous analysis that is necessary for more definitive answers as to whether what is being examined is accurate.

While the concept of face validity has been a peripheral issue in psychological test construction for many years, and it became more prominent in the 1940s and 1950s, some scholars suggested that the term “face validity” be eliminated from psychometrics and research design altogether. However, the first set of Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing by the American Psychological Association in 1954 consolidated claims made for face validity by Lee Cronbach and colleagues, particularly Anne Anastasi who claimed that face validity was a separate concept in its own right, was different from other forms of validity, and was not interchangeable with other forms of validity.

Subsequent American Psychological Association standards have tended to downplay the worth of face validity. By 1985, the American Psychological Association standards ignored the issue of face validity altogether, even though some argued for its continued inclusion.

Since, there appears to be some interest in the concept. For example, in 2001, Mark P. Mostert constructed and applied face validity criteria to meta-analyses in special education to challenge the established idea that meta-analyses are assumed to provide conclusive quantitative answers within a body of research. Mostert demonstrated that the validity of published meta-analyses (in this case, special education) could be substantially influenced by the information, or lack thereof, supplied to the reader. He then developed a set of criteria across six domains that needed to be available to the reader in order to judge face validity of any meta-analysis (locating studies/context, specifying inclusion criteria, coding independent variables, calculating individual study outcomes, data analysis, limits of the study).

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