Assessment terms beginning with C

This is a measurement glossary, not a general HR glossary. It covers the vocabulary that appears the moment you open a score report or challenge a vendor's claim — reliability, validity, norms, cut scores, item statistics and fairness analysis — because that is the vocabulary buyers are handed without explanation and the one that decides whether a number can carry a decision.

• Construct validity

  Construct validity is the evidence that a test measures the psychological attribute it claims to measure, rather than something merely correlated with it. It is built from convergent evidence — the score tracks other measures of the same attribute — and discriminant evidence, that it does not track measures of different attributes.

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• Criterion validity

  Also called Criterion-related validity

  Criterion validity is the strength of the relationship between a test score and an independent outcome the test is meant to anticipate — typically job performance, training results or retention. It is reported as a correlation coefficient, and it is measured either at the same time as the outcome or in advance of it.

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• Cronbach's alpha

  Also called Coefficient alpha, Internal consistency

  Cronbach's alpha is an index of internal consistency: how far the items in a scale behave as though they measure one thing. It runs from 0 to about 1 and rises with both the average correlation between items and the sheer number of items, which is why a high alpha on its own proves very little.

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• Cut score

  Also called Pass mark, Threshold, Cutoff

  A cut score is the point on a score scale at which a decision changes — pass or fail, shortlist or reject, certified or not. It is a policy choice made by the organisation using the test rather than a property of the test itself, and moving it changes who is selected without changing anyone's score.

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