Measurement validity induction: a issues in the assessment, and measuring constructs through scales and instruments

The importance of the psychometric properties of measures in applied and basic research in the social sciences, particularly in psychology, seems to have increased with the widespread access to these procedures and their growing dissemination worldwide. Nonetheless, the availability and use of these measures may be problematic for researchers. In this paper, we propose the concept of measurement validity induction as a conceptual tool to describe the omission or inappropriate application of measurement validity results obtained in one context to justify the use and interpretation of the same measures in different contexts. In general, this involves the risk of using irrelevant information to justify the use or interpretation of a measure, that is, advocating for validity when it may not exist. Several examples from the published literature on scale validations are analyzed to detect measurement validity induction in the areas of clinical practice, occupational health, and user satisfaction. With this definition (measurement validity induction), we argue for the need to report minimum parameters of the validity of a measure in a new context beyond those reported in manuals or previous studies.