Calibration experiments: An alternative to multi-method approaches for measurement validation in consumer research

The validity of measurements addresses perhaps the most fundamental confound to scientific inference—without valid measurements, valid inference is impossible. In their recently published Journal of Business Research article, a top-tier journal in the field, Dominik Bach (University of Bonn), Edward E. Rigdon (Georgia State University), and Marko Sarstedt (Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich) challenge the status quo of measurement validation. Traditionally reliant on multi-trait multi-method (MTMM) matrices, the authors propose calibration experiments as a powerful alternative—especially when latent variables (like consumer confidence or emotion) can be externally manipulated.

The article is available here (open access): https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0148296325001754