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. 1992 Fall;15(2):147–156. doi: 10.1007/BF03392597

Trends in the measurement of social validity

Craig H Kennedy
PMCID: PMC2733484  PMID: 22478125

Abstract

Since its inception in the mid-1970s, social validity has provided applied behavior analysts with a critical measure of the social impact and importance of their interventions. Recent discussion, however, has questioned the use of this construct in regard to the frequency and types of social validty measures employed in research. Despite the ensuing discussion, virtually no quantitative information has been made available to frame various perspectives and opinions. The purpose of this report is to present a content analysis of social validity measures used over the previous 20 years. Social validity was assessed along three dimensions: (a) type of assessment, (b) focus of assessment, and (c) time of assessment. Articles published in the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis (1968-1990) and Behavior Modification (1977-1990) were surveyed. The results of the content analysis indicate that current applications of social validation procedures are presented in 20% of the articles surveyed. The majority of articles used subjective evaluation of outcomes following intervention to assess social validity. In addition, the data indicated that normative comparison was a rarely used method of social validation and that its use has been decreasing over time.

Keywords: social validity, applied behavior analysis, assessment, measurement, subjective evaluation, normative comparison

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Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

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