Synthetic Validity: A Great Idea Whose Time Never Came

Abstract

Synthetic validity is very much like monogamy. It is an idea that is universally admired but not widely practiced. The concept of synthetic validity has been around for almost 60 years (Lawshe, 1952) and it is described in virtually every testing and measurement book and every industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology textbook I have ever read. I still vividly remember my undergraduate Psychological Testing professor dismissing synthetic validity as “made-up validity.” I thought he was wrong then, and I still do. Nevertheless, it is worth asking why synthetic validity studies are so rare.