Following the kick-off conference in 2012, the second roundtable of the research program took place in Berlin on March 14th and 15th 2013. The main focus of the conference, in which 120 researchers participated, was on validation and validity.
Validity is a central quality criterion in empirical research. Therefore the validation of the instruments developed by the projects, as well as the capacity of conclusions based on these instruments, play a decisive role in the funding initiative. The two-day conference offered the possibility to reflect and discuss important aspects of validity and validation.
The conference was launched with an overview presentation given by Professor Andreas Frey (Friedrich-Schiller-University of Jena). Afterwards different aspects of validity were focused on in three workshops: content validity, criterion validity and construct validity. The workshops all started off with introductory notes by the workshop instructors and lead to a focused thematic exchange between the different projects. The workshop on content validity was moderated by Professor Knut Schwippert (University of Hamburg), the workshop on criterion validity by Professor Niclas Schaper (University of Paderborn) and the workshop on construct validity by Professor Johannes Hartig (DIPF Frankfurt).
The results of the workshops were brought together on the second day in a plenary discussion. This resulted in an overall perspective on validity and validation.
Next to the roundtable discussion, young academics of the research initiative were able to participate in workshops on the item-response-theory