Salvaging construct equivalence through equating

Turban, Sanders, Francis, and Osburn (1989) provided a two-step procedure for selecting a replacement for a currently used test without an expensive validation study. The two steps are confirmatory factor analysis and impact analysis. We evaluated this two-step procedure and found that it was possible to apply it and find that the replacement test was not acceptable. We provide an example of just such a negative outcome that was salvaged by the extra step of equipercentile equating. This step, added to Turban et al., required no additional investment other than an equating analysis on the extant data. We caution that equating does not create construct equivalence, but is a necessary procedure when tests measure identical constructs with differing distributional shapes.