Identifying Validity Information - Answers

1. Read the first paragraph of page 159, then quickly scan the rest of 159, 160, and 161. Read the two paragraphs on page 161 entitled “Measuring Empowerment.” Once you finish that, review page 162.

What type of validity is Menon addressing on these pages?

Menon provided a detailed account of Content Validity. Consider these steps he took:

a. Define Construct to be Measured and Identify Dimensions of that Construct

Note that Menon defined Employee Empowerment as consisting of three dimensions: perceived control, perceived competence, and goal internalization. Each of these was defined and explained in turn.

b. Generate Items

Menon developed a pool of items (page 162) from brainstorming, using theory and definitions given above, and reviewing and drawing from other instruments. He developed an initial pool of 60 items, 20 for each dimension. Note that items were written specifically for one of the three dimensions listed above.

c. Expert Review

Menon asked 5 experts to review each item. They were to judge (a) relevance of the item for the dimension for which it was written, (b) conceptual ambiguity of the item, (c) sentence clarity of the item, (d) item conciseness, and two other topics per item. Each item was ranked by the experts

The steps outlined above help Menon to establish content validity ---- these steps help to show that the instrument contains items that appear to measure what they were designed to measure theoretically, and that experts reviewed and agreed these items appear to be relevant.

2. Which of Menon’s three measures correlated most strongly with helplessness and what was this correlation?
3. Did we predict this?
4. What type of validity evidence is this for perceived control?

----- Answers to 2, 3, and 4c -----

2. Perceived control correlated r = -.74 with helplessness.

3. Yes, we anticipated a negative correlation. We wrote: “The more control one has, the lower should be one’s feelings of helplessness, so these two variables should correlate negatively.”

4. This correlation seems more consistent with construct validity since helplessness is not a measure of control, however, it could also be view as evidence of concurrent validity since helplessness and control seem to be opposite ends of a continuum. Difficult to call this one.

----- Questions about Perceived Competence -----

5. Which of the external measures correlated most strongly with perceived competence?
6. What type of validity evidence would this be?

----- Answers to 5 and 6 appear below -----

5. The external measure of competence correlated most strongly (r = .66) with Menon’s measure of perceived competence.

6. This appears to be evidence for concurrent validity since both scales measure competence, both scales measure the same construct.

----- Questions about Goal Internalization -----

7. The external measure of job meaning (reported just as “Meaning” in Table 3), which was considered above, correlates most strongly with which of Menon’s measures?
8. What type of validity evidence does this appear to represent?

----- Answers to 7 and 8 appear below -----

7. “Meaning”, or job meaning, correlates most strongly with goal internalization (Pearon’s r = .48).

8. Since both of these variables tend to measure the degree to which an employee adopts the culture of the organization, this appears to be concurrent evidence of validity.