ABSTRACT
Higher education professionals typically make use of a variety of assessments, from standardized tests used as a piece of information in the admissions and placement process, to classroom assessments used to assign course grades to students at the end of a semester. Reliability in measurement refers to consistency in scores; validity refers to the support provided for any interpretations of uses of the assessment data accurately measuring what they are intended to represent. The Standards provides a framework for discussing validity and reliability and is intended to guide practitioners in best practices in the development and use of assessments. Validity is typically regarded as the most important property of an assessment, though it is actually a function of score use. The Standards discusses evidence based on different types of data. The question of how much validity or reliability evidence is necessary for a particular use of test scores is really unanswerable.
