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Big Data and the Challenge of Construct Validity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 December 2015

Michael T. Braun  and
Goran Kuljanin
Michael T. Braun*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Virginia Tech
Goran Kuljanin
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, DePaul University
*
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Michael T. Braun, who is now at Department of Psychology, University of South Florida, 4151 PCD, Tampa, FL 33620. E-mail: [email protected]
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Extract

One important issue not highlighted by Guzzo, Fink, King, Tonidandel, and Landis (2015) is that simply establishing construct validity will be significantly more challenging with big data than ever before. One needs to only look as far as the other social sciences analyzing big data (e.g., communications, economics, industrial engineering) to observe the difficulty of making valid claims as to what measured variables substantively “mean.” This presents a significant hurdle in the application of big data to organizational research questions because of the critical importance of demonstrating validity in the organizational sciences as highlighted by Guzzo et al.

Type
Commentaries
Information
Industrial and Organizational Psychology , Volume 8 , Issue 4 , December 2015 , pp. 521 - 527
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology 2015 

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