FACTORS ON AUTHENTICITY AND VALIDITY OF

EVIDENCES/INFORMATION

Authenticity refers to the trustworthiness of a record as a record. An authentic

record is one that is what it purports to be and has not been tampered with or
otherwise corrupted. Authenticity is established by assessing the identity and the
integrity of the record. It must be possible to ascertain at all times what a record
is, when it was created, by whom, what action or matter it participated in, and
what its juridical/administrative, cultural, and documentary contexts were

While there is a wealth of information found in various sources electronically or non-

electronically, you should also keep in mind that not all of these pieces of information are
accurate, relevant, valid or credible. Hence, it is important to evaluate sources of information that
you plan to include in your academic writing venture.

The following are some of the criteria assessing whether the source is suitable to use for
academic purposes. The criteria include relevance, authority, currency, contents and location of
sources

1. Relevance of the Source

● How well does the source support your stand?
● You can check the title, table of contents, summary, introduction or headings of
the text to have a sense of its content.

2. Authority/Author’s Qualifications
● Is the author’s name identified?
● Is the author’s background, education or training related to the topic?
● If the source does not have an author, think twice before using it.
● Legitimate academic texts must include citations. Citations demonstrate that the
writer has thoroughly researched the topic and is not plagiarizing the material.

3. Currency/Date of Publication
● What is the date of the publication?
● In most fields, the data from the older publications may no longer be valid. As much as
possible, the date pf publication should be at most five years earlier.

4. Contents/Accuracy of Information
● Does the author have a lot of citations in his or her text and/or bibliography or works
cited section?
● You do not want to use source that is disputable, so make sure to verify your findings
with multiple sources.

5. Location of Sources
● Where was the source published? Was it published digitally or in print?
● Does it provide complete publication information such as author/s, editor/s, title, date
of publication and publisher?
● What is the URL of the website?
● Avoid using blogs or personal homepage and wiki sites (Wikipedia, Wiktionary,
Wikiquotes)
● If the URL includes the top-level domain .edu, then that means that it has been
published by an academic institution such as university
Validity
Educational assessment should always have a clear purpose, making validity  the most
important attribute of a good test.

The validity of an assessment tool is the extent to which it measures what it was designed
to measure, without contamination from other characteristics. For example, a test of
reading comprehension should not require mathematical ability.

There are several different types of validity:

 Face validity
 Content validity
 Criterion-related validity
 Construct validity

FACE VALIDITY
A test in which most people would agree that the test items appear to measure what
the test is intended to measure would have strong face validity. For example, a
mathematical test consisting of problems in which the test taker has to add and subtract
numbers may be considered to have strong face validity.

CONTENT VALIDITY
The extent to which a test measures a representative sample of the subject matter or
behavior under investigation. For example, if a test is designed to survey arithmetic
skills at a third-grade level, content validity indicates how well it represents the range of
arithmetic operations possible at that level.

CRITERION-RELATED VALIDITY
Criterion validity is a type of validity that examines whether scores on one test are
predictive of performance on another. For example, if employees take an IQ text, the
boss would like to know if this test predicts actual job performance. If an IQ test does
predict job performance, then it has criterion validity.

CONSTRUCT VALIDITY
Construct validity refers to whether a scale or test measures the construct
adequately. An example is a measurement of the human brain, such as intelligence, level
of emotion, proficiency or ability.

PREDICTIVE VALIDITY
Predictive validity is the degree to which test scores accurately predict scores on a
criterion measure. For example, the degree to which college admissions test scores
predict college grade point average (GPA)
 CONVERGENT VALDITY
Convergent validity refers to how closely a test is related to other tests that measure
the same (or similar) constructs. Here, a construct is a behavior, attitude, or
concept, particularly one that is not directly observable. For example, A French
vocabulary test would have high convergent validity if candidates who took the test
would get similar scores on different French vocabulary tests

DIVERGENT VALIDITY
 the divergent validity of a survey instrument, like an IQ-test, indicates that the results
obtained by this instrument do not correlate too strongly with measurements of a similar
but distinct trait. An example would be a test used by a company for hiring purposes that
measures how proficient someone is at a particular skill

A valid assessment should have good coverage of the criteria (concepts, skills and
knowledge) relevant to the purpose of the examination.

Examples:
 The PROBE test is a form of reading running record which measures reading behaviours
and includes some comprehension questions. It allows teachers to see the reading
strategies that students are using, and potential problems with decoding. The test would
not, however, provide in-depth information about a student’s comprehension strategies
across a range of texts.
 STAR (Supplementary Test of Achievement in Reading) is not designed as a
comprehensive test of reading ability. It focuses on assessing students’ vocabulary
understanding, basic sentence comprehension and paragraph comprehension. It is most
appropriately used for students who don’t score well on more general testing (such as
PAT or e-asTTle) as it provides a more fine-grained analysis of basic comprehension
strategies.