Construct validation in counseling psychology research

Counseling psychology researchers devote little attention to theory-based measurement validation, as evidenced by cursory mention of validity issues in the method and discussion sections of published research reports. Especially, many researchers appear unaware of the limitations of correlations between pairs of self-report measures as evidence of construct validity. The authors provide an overview of the process of construct validation via user-friendly terminology and examples, with special attention to aspects often neglected in counseling psychology research, including specific recommendations for design and interpretation of multimethod validity investigations.