No abstract; the following are the final two paragraphs:
Undoubtedly, there will be further important studies that point out to us the shortcomings of certain social validity measures, just as has been done for observer-dependent objective measures. But we can't despair. After all, measurement has been our thing. In our field, we have developed so many ingenious measurement systems. There is no doubt that we could measure the disruptive classroom behavior of a school of fish, if need be. Surely, we will be able to develop measurement systems that will tell us better whether or not our clients are happy with our efforts and our effects.
Earlier in our history, Watson and Skinner argued forcefully against subjective measurement because they were concerned about the inappropriate causal roles that hypothetical internal variables, subjectively reported, were playing in social science. As a result, many of us concluded that all subjective measurement was inappropriate. A new consensus seems to be developing. It seems that if we aspire to social importance, then we must develop systems that allow our consumers to provide us feedback about how our applications relate to their values, to their reinforcers. This is not a rejection of our heritage. Our use of subjective measures does not relate to internal causal variables. Instead, it is an attempt to assess the dimensions of complex reinforcers in socially acceptable and practical ways. It is an evolutionary event that is occurring as a function of the contingencies of the applied research environment; contingencies that our founders would probably say they appreciate, if we had the nerve to ask them for such subjective feedback on our behavior.