Construct Validity Assessment in IS Research

Abstract

Valid and reliable measures are critical to theory development as they facilitate theory testing in empirical research. Efforts in scale development have been put on ensuring aspects of validity. In this paper, the authors address a specific topic of construct validity assessment in scale development. Using data from the five leading IS journals between 1989-2008, in this paper, the authors determine if and how the field has advanced in construct validity assessment. Findings suggest that the proportion of studies reporting construct validity had increased and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA), Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA), and Multi-Trait Multi-Method (MTMM) were the three most common methods of construct validity assessment. The authors also apply a popular method from psychology and exemplify how the correlation analysis technique can be used to measure construct validity.