Test Validity
The validity of a test, or the degree to which a test actually measures what it is
initially intended to measure (Hughes, 1989: 22; Brown, 2001: 387), is a complex criterion in
the field of testing. With the ever growing list of recognised validities in the academic field of
language testing, Owen et al., (1997: 20) highlights that this list is often dispiriting due to the
abundance of choice and approved validities. Amongst this selection, the most pertinent types
of validity for the purpose of this paper are ‘construct’, ‘criterion-related’ (concurrent and
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