To ensure an inventory measures the factors associated with career development, which type of validity should be evaluated?

• A. Content
• B. Face
• C. Construct
• D. Criterion

Answer: (C)

Think about what validity really checks: does the tool measure the thing it’s intended to measure? For an inventory that aims to capture the factors involved in career development, you want evidence that the scores reflect the actual underlying constructs behind career development—things like career self-efficacy, interests, goals, and readiness—rather than just a random collection of items that seem related.

Construct validity is about that alignment between the instrument and the theoretical constructs it’s meant to assess. It’s shown through evidence that the items group together as predicted (factor structure), and that the scores relate to other measures in theoretically expected ways (convergent validity with related constructs and discriminant validity with unrelated ones), as well as how well the scale behaves across different groups.

Content validity would focus on whether the items cover all relevant aspects of the domain, but not on whether those items truly tap the underlying constructs. Face validity is about whether the items look like they measure what they’re supposed to, which is more superficial. Criterion validity involves how well the inventory predicts external outcomes, not whether it actually captures the underlying factors of career development.