An important part of my job as European Operations Director at Podium is providing in-depth information about tests to prospective clients. Recently, an international corporation reached out with a Request For Information, and specified: “onlyoccupational assessments with externally validated reliability and validity data will be considered.” Experience tells me that when clients make this statement on an RFI they are looking for a particular accreditation, and while this is perfectly understandable there are reasons why my inner pedant finds this problematic.
So where’s the problem in requiring that a test is valid before you buy into it? Well, it’s not a problem at all. The problem is more what constitutes“externally validated reliability and validity data” when taken at face value. By understanding where this notion of ‘validity’ comes from, we can analyse tests on our own terms rather than simply taking someone else’s word for it, leading us to make more informed choices and achiev…