Russel-Research-Method-in-Anthropology

The Foundations of Social Research 57
Content Validity
Content validity is achieved when an instrument has appropriate content for
measuring a complex concept, or construct. If you walk out of a test and feel
that it was unfair because it tapped too narrow a band of knowledge, your
complaint is that the test lacked content validity.
Content validity is very, very tough to achieve, particularly for complex,
multidimensional constructs. Consider, for example, what’s involved in measuring
a concept like strength of ethnic identity among, say, second-generation
Mexican Americans. Any scale to assess this has to have components that deal
with religion, language, socioeconomic status, sense of history, and gastronomy.
Religion: Mexican Americans tend to be mostly Roman Catholic, but a
growing number of Mexicans are now Protestants. The migration of a few
million of these converts to the United States over the next decade will have an
impact on ethnic politics—and ethnic identity—within the Mexican American
population.
Language: Some second-generation Mexican Americans speak almost no
Spanish; others are completely bilingual. Some use Spanish only in the home;
others use it with their friends and business associates.
Socioeconomic status: Many Mexican Americans are poor (about 36% of
Hispanic households in the United States have incomes below $25,000 a year),
but many others are well off (about 15% have incomes above $75,000 a year)
(SAUS 2004–2005, table 683). People with radically different incomes tend
to have different political and economic values.
Sense of history: Some so-called Mexican Americans have roots that go
back to before the British Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. The Hispanos
(as they are known) of New Mexico were Spaniards who came north from the
Spanish colony of Mexico. Their self-described ethnic identity is quite different
from recent immigrants from Mexico.
Gastronomy: The last refuge of ethnicity is food. When language is gone
(Spanish, Yiddish, Polish, Gaelic, Greek, Chinese . . .), and when ties to the
‘‘old country’’ are gone, burritos, bagels, pirogis, corned beef, mousaka, and
lo-mein remain. For some second-generation Mexican Americans, cuisine is
practically synonymous with identity; for others it’s just part of a much larger
complex of traits.
A valid measure of ethnic identity, then, has to get at all these areas. People’s
use of Spanish inside and outside the home and their preference for Mexican
or Mexican American foods are good measures of some of the content of
Mexican American ethnicity. But if these are the only questions you ask, then
your measure of ethnicity has low content validity. (See Cabassa [2003] for
an assessment of acculturation scales for Hispanics in the United States.)