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Incremental validity is a type of validity that is used to determine whether a new psychometric assessment will increase the predictive ability of an existing method of assessment. In other words, incremental validity seeks to answer if the new test adds much information that might be obtained with simpler, already existing methods.

Example: The use of “projective personality assessments” such as the Rorschach ink blot might be considered unnecessary since other, objective exams perform its task (determining if the testee has mental illness) faster and more reliably. The Rorschach would thus have poor incremental validity, since clinicians can determine the existence of mental illness just as reliably with the Rorschach plus other exams as with other exams alone.

A positive example may be an a clinician who uses an interview technique as well as a specific questionnaire to determine if a patient has mental illness and has better success at determining mental illness than a clinician who uses the interview technique alone. Thus, the specific questionnaire would be considered incrementally valid. Because the questionnaire in conjunction with the interview produced more accurate determinations, and added information for the clinician, the questionnaire is incrementally valid.