Question

A middle school counselor is selecting a standardized test to be used in making decisions for the school's social science curriculum. The counselor is comparing the ABC Social Sciences Test with the XYZ Social Studies Achievement Test. The ABC test manual reports an internal consistency coefficient of .37, while the XYZ manual reports an internal consistency coefficient of .82.

For the purpose of evaluating the school's curriculum, the counselor should be most concerned with which type of validity?

A. Predictive
B. Concurrent
C. Discriminant
D. Content

Answer 1

For choosing a standardized test to evaluate a school's social science curriculum, a middle school counselor should prioritize content validity to ensure the test aligns with what students are taught.

Step-by-step explanation:

When selecting a standardized test for evaluating a school's social science curriculum, the middle school counselor should be most concerned with content validity. Content validity refers to the extent to which a test represents all facets of the given social science subject matter, and the degree to which the test questions are relevant to the curriculum being evaluated. Since the goal is to make decisions about the curriculum, it's essential that the test accurately reflects the content that students are expected to learn. The internal consistency coefficients provided (.37 for ABC and .82 for XYZ) suggest that the XYZ test is more reliable in terms of internal consistency, which is also an important factor when choosing an assessment tool, though it is distinct from validity.