A student notes that only 10 questions on a 100-question test covered the material studied. Which property is in question?

• A. Standardization
• B. Reliability
• C. Usability
• D. Validity

Answer: (D)

The key idea here is validity. Validity asks whether a test actually measures what it’s intended to measure. If only a small portion of the test (10 out of 100 questions) covers the material that was studied, the test isn’t representing the domain it’s supposed to assess. As a result, the scores may not reflect the student’s true knowledge of that material, which undermines the interpretation of the results. That mismatch is a validity issue—specifically, content validity, since the test content doesn’t align with the taught material.

Standardization is about consistent administration and scoring, reliability concerns consistency of scores across administrations, and usability concerns how user-friendly the test is. While important, these aspects don’t address whether the test covers the intended content, which is why validity is the best answer.