What is construct validity?
Quantitative nursing research is often reliant on measurement of phenomena. In some studies, there may be measurement of objective data such as height, weight and heart rate. In others though, researchers may have to develop bespoke measurement tools or scales that seek to quantify more abstract phenomena. For example, nurse researchers have previously developed tools that measure health professionals’ compassion for caring1 or the stigma of COVID-19 infection in healthcare workers.2 In these cases, those ideas at the heart of the studies—compassion and stigma—are constructs , terms that we use to describe concepts within broader theories. When researching constructs such as compassion or stigma, any measurement tools we use need to demonstrate high levels of validity —that is, they need to measure what they are designed to measure. A failure to ensure—or insufficient evidence of—the validity of measurement tools is a common source of bias in published research.3 The more subjective an
