“Validity is a complicated and changing theoretical construct that has evolved
significantly over the past fifty years. While traditional positivistic conceptions of
validity tended to characterize it as one or more characteristics of a test that could
be definitively determined, contemporary theorists have reconstructed the con-
cept. In a now-classic chapter on validity, Samuel Messick (1989a) extends the
definition of validity to focus on the interpretation of scores and to encompass
social consequences:

Validity is an integrated evaluative judgment of the degree to which empirical evidence and theoretical rationales support the adequacy and appropriateness of inferences and
actions based on test scores and other modes of assessment. (p. 13) “