Revisiting validity in cross-cultural psychometric-test development: A systems-informed shift towards qualitative research designs
South African Journal of Psychiatry
| Field | Value | |
| Title | Revisiting validity in cross-cultural psychometric-test development: A systems-informed shift towards qualitative research designs | |
| Creator | Swanepoel, Isabelle Kruger, Christa | |
| Description | Background: The problem of enhancing validity in cross-cultural psychometric-test development in the field of clinical psychology has been perpetuated by several factors. Societal biases and value judgements, a positivistic paradigm, and challenges associated with multiculturalism continually spill over into cross-cultural research methodology. An overemphasis on quantitative methods and insufficient exploration of the meaning of the concepts to be measured tend to threaten construct validity. Objectives and Methods: This article tracks some of the progress in the field of clinical cross-cultural psychometric-test development – prior to and since the International Test Commission Guidelines, and including the complex South African situation – to give support to the perspective that previous cross-cultural research inadequately equips contemporary researchers to develop valid tests for multicultural clinical contexts.Results: A systems-informed paradigm shift is proposed, which involves the application of systemic concepts such as circularity, relationality, neutrality, and a concern with process issues. Ideally, multidisciplinary, multicultural test-developing teams that include members of the target-cultural group should consult and collaborate with the target groups before embarking on test-adaptation or test-development activities. Such teamwork would help to ensure that the meaning of the relevant concept/s is captured in a valid way for each cultural group. Furthermore, such collaboration should form a part of using qualitative research designs more frequently in clinical cross-cultural psychometric-test development.Conclusions: The emphasis should be on building theory and generating hypotheses, in order to pursue a deeper understanding of the constructs under investigation, and to advance theoretical developments in the field of clinical cross-cultural psychometric-test development. | |
| Publisher | AOSIS | |
| Date | 2011-03-01 | |
| Identifier | 10.4102/sajpsychiatry.v17i1.250 | |
| Source | South African Journal of Psychiatry; Vol 17, No 1 (2011); 6 2078-6786 1608-9685 | |
| Language | eng | |
| Relation |
The following web links (URLs) may trigger a file download or direct you to an alternative webpage to gain access to a publication file format of the published article:
https://sajp.org.za/index.php/sajp/article/view/250/244
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