Construct validity of indicator-scales developed from the Comprehensive Assessment and Referral Evaluation interview...

This paper is an assessment of the construct validity of the scales developed from the Comprehensive Assessment and Referral Evaluation (CARE). Data collected from 445 elderly adults residing in New York and 396 in London were used to develop scales to measure medical, psychiatric, and social problems. Diagnostic and global ratings made by psychiatrists and social scientists provided one source of corroborative information; scales developed from information obtained from a random subsample of 162 collateral sources were used as another method of determining validity. Evidence was provided for convergent and divergent validity using multitrait-multimethod matrices to represent the relationships among scales across methods. Convergent validity coefficients ranged from (.40 to .75) for the CARE scales with the diagnostic ratings and from (.30 to .70) for the informant scales. It is argued that most scales are valid by this criterion.