AbstractTests and assessments are used in organizations for a wide range of purposes, and it is the uses of tests, not the tests themselves, that are validated. As a result, the critical question is often not “Is this test valid?”, but rather “Valid for what?”. Tests normally have multiple uses and purposes in organizations, which may be defined and understood differently by different stakeholders, and tests might have as many validities as they have uses. The strengths and weaknesses of existing validation strategies are examined and compared in the light of the ways tests are used in organizations. Content validation often seems unconnected with the ways tests are used and interpreted in organizations, and is not always useful a strategy for validating tests. Criterion‐oriented validation methods (including sophisiticated variants, such as the validity generalization model) are often deficient because they apply a univariate strategy for evaluating what is clearly a multivariate phenomenon—i.e., use of ...