ABSTRACT
The assumption of this text is that the scientific method enables research to speak as truthfully as possible to as many as possible. Accomplishing this is the essence of validity in content analysis as well as in other research. Reliability is a necessary but insufficient condition for establishing validity. This chapter discusses four types of measurement validity—face validity, concurrent validity, predictive validity, and construct validity—and how these relate to the concepts of internal and external validity. It also discusses the relationship between external and social validity. Because content analysis deals with naturally occurring behavior (communication) outside of the laboratory, controlling for other causal factors is difficult. However, the unobtrusive observation of human communication artifacts makes content analysis an important tool for social science in drawing externally and socially valid inference about individual and organizational behaviors.
