Construct validity study based on factor analysis test on Chinese language

This paper first presents the development of the concept of construct, and then makes a study on the construct validity of two placement tests of Chinese as a second language. As a result, only one factor is extracted from 4 subtests of these two placement tests. Generally, it is said both placement tests measure one trait-Chinese language ability, and both claims good construct validity (or convergent validity). However, based on other researchers’ study on the limitation of exploratory factor analysis, the author proposes that there might be another explanation to the result - factor amalgamation might exist in the research because the factors are highly correlated. Therefore, we need to make a further research on a large sample with other methods.