Face validity is a property of a test intended to measure something. It is the validity of a test at face value. In other words, a test can be said to have face validity if it "looks like" it is going to measure what it is supposed to measure. For instance, if you prepare a test to measure whether students can perform multiplication, and the people you show it to all agree that it looks like a good test of multiplication ability, you have shown the face validity of your test.
Some people use the term face validity only to refer to the validity of observers who are not expert in testing methodologies. For instance, if you have a test that is designed to measure whether children are good spellers, and you ask their parents whether the test is a good test, you are studying the face validity of the test. If you ask an expert in testing spelling, some people would argue that you are not testing face validity. This distinction seems too careful for most applications. Generally face validity means that the test "looks like" it will work, as opposed to "has been shown to work".
Face validity is often contrasted with Content validity.
Read more about Face Validity: Simulation
Famous quotes containing the words face and/or validity:
“My formula for greatness in human beings is amor fati: that one wants to change nothing, neither forwards, nor backwards, nor in all eternity. Not merely to endure necessity, still less to hide it—all idealism is mendacity in the face of necessity—but rather to love it.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“The hardiest skeptic who has seen a horse broken, a pointer trained, or has visited a menagerie or the exhibition of the Industrious Fleas, will not deny the validity of education. “A boy,” says Plato, “is the most vicious of all beasts;” and in the same spirit the old English poet Gascoigne says, “A boy is better unborn than untaught.””
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)