ABSTRACT
Tests and other assessments are used in many ways and for different purposes in higher education. The professional testing community that develops standardized tests, and generally adheres to the best professional practices, insists that test developers and those who use tests and test scores at the university evaluate the effectiveness of specific uses of tests. This chapter begins with a brief introduction to validity as testing professionals have defined and described it. The current Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing (AERA, APA, & NCME, 2014) consider there to be five sources of validation evidence: evidence based upon test content; evidence based upon response processes; evidence based upon internal structure; evidence based upon relations with other variables; and evidence based upon the consequences of testing. Content-related sources of evidence deal with how well a test's content represents a defined domain, such as an academic discipline, or the material covered in a specific course.
