Representation of concepts and relationships between concepts
A nomological network (or nomological net[1]) is a representation of the
concepts (
constructs) of interest in a study, their observable manifestations, and the interrelationships between these. The term "
nomological" derives from the
Greek, meaning "lawful", or in
philosophy of science terms, "law-like". It was
Cronbach and
Meehl's view of
construct validity that in order to provide
evidence that a
measure has construct validity, a nomological network must be developed for its measure. [2]
The necessary elements of a nomological network are:
Correspondencerules, allowing each construct to be measured
empirically. Such a rule is said to "operationalize" the construct, as for example in the
operationalization: "Age" is measured by asking "how old are you?"
Validity evidence based on nomological validity is a general form of
construct validity. It is the degree to which a construct behaves as it should within a system of related constructs (the nomological network).[3]
^Preckel, Franzis; Brunner, Martin (2017), "Nomological Nets", in Zeigler-Hill, Virgil; Shackelford, Todd K. (eds.), Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences, Springer International Publishing, pp. 1–4,
doi:
10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_1334-1,
ISBN9783319280998
^Alavi, M, Archibald, M., McMaster, R. Lopez, V. and Cleary, M. (2018) Aligning theory and methodology in mixed methods Research: Before Design Theoretical Placement International Journal of Social Research Methodology 21:5, 527-540