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Synthetic Validity: A Great Idea Whose Time Never Came

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 January 2015

Kevin R. Murphy
Kevin R. Murphy*
Affiliation:
The Pennsylvania State University
*
E-mail: [email protected], Address: Department of Psychology, Pennsylvania State University, Moore Building, University Park, PA 16802
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Extract

Synthetic validity is very much like monogamy. It is an idea that is universally admired but not widely practiced. The concept of synthetic validity has been around for almost 60 years (Lawshe, 1952) and it is described in virtually every testing and measurement book and every industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology textbook I have ever read. I still vividly remember my undergraduate Psychological Testing professor dismissing synthetic validity as “made-up validity.” I thought he was wrong then, and I still do. Nevertheless, it is worth asking why synthetic validity studies are so rare.

Type
Commentaries
Information
Industrial and Organizational Psychology , Volume 3 , Issue 3 , September 2010 , pp. 356 - 359
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology 2010 

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