Question

What are some issues to consider when using face validity? What are some potential pitfalls to avoid, and how would you avoid them? Give a couple examples

Answer 1

Ans) Face validity is often said to be the least sophisticated and the simplest method of measuring validity of a survey.

- If the information "appears" to be valid at first glance to the untrained eye, (observers, people taking the test) it is said to have face validity.

- Face validity takes into consideration only the face value of the information, and not its reliability or accuracy.

• If face validity is the only form of validity of research, then it cannot be relied upon as it is the least sophisticated and the weakest validity measure. Some experts also suggest that this validity cannot be even classed as real validity.
• Since face validity is a subjective measure, what may be valid for one person may not be so for the other, which causes confusion.
• Even if a piece of research appears to be valid (has high face validity), that does not necessarily mean that it is actually proven to be valid and reliable. Hence, it really isn't possible to tell how useful or correct a survey/piece of research is unless it is measured using other forms of validity apart from face validity.
• Sometimes, research surveys may contain questions which might offend the participants, but are crucial for completing the research agenda. At such times, if the survey has high face validity, participants may refuse to answer those questions or might answer them in a biased manner, which will lead to wrong information getting recorded.

The reliability of a survey is just as important as its validity. Just because a piece of information collected through a survey is valid, it definitely doesn't prove that it can be relied upon, too. Reliability is actually the consistency of that information. If a survey is reliable, it means that the questions asked in that survey elicits the same responses every time it is taken, under similar conditions.

In case of face validity, the research cannot be relied upon unless proven otherwise through other validation measures. Unless the research is proved to be reliable, it cannot be considered applicable, which practically makes it useless. Hence, a survey result should be reliable even if it does not have high face validity. Face validity cannot be relied upon unless it has other measures supporting it.