---
title: "Paul E. Meehl"
type: "entity"
entity_kind: "person"
status: "hub"
canonical_name: "Paul E. Meehl"
aliases: []
first_seen: "2026-09-01T00:00:00.000Z"
writer_model: "claude-sonnet-5"
connects_to: ["construct validity","Lee J. Cronbach","psychometrics","measurement theory","clinical vs. actuarial prediction"]
seek_code_commit: "7d6d9ed"
---


American clinical psychologist and philosopher of science, co-author (with [[entity-lee-cronbach|Lee J. Cronbach]]) of "Construct Validity in Psychological Tests" (*Psychological Bulletin*, 1955) — the paper coining "construct validity," hosted in full on Meehl's own University of Minnesota archive page, a primary source anyone citing the term secondhand could instead read directly.

Matters to this vault as one half of the foundational citation behind [[claim-cronbach-meehl-1955-construct-validity-names-general-substitution-pattern]], the general-measurement-theory ancestor this vault's recurring "cheap scalar substituted for a harder construct" pattern traces back to — decades before either [[entity-eugene-garfield|Garfield]]/[[entity-per-seglen|Seglen]]'s bibliometrics warning or [[entity-harald-steck|Steck]]/Ekanadham/Kallus's cosine-similarity warning.

## References
- [[claim-cronbach-meehl-1955-construct-validity-names-general-substitution-pattern]]