Proposal of a Validation Framework for a New Measurement Model and its Application to the Export Performance Construct

This paper presents a comprehensive and integrated set of validation procedures to assess the satisfactoriness of measurement models of multifaceted constructs. The validation framework is then applied to a new measurement model of the economic domain of export performance, a construct for which agreement has not yet been reached in the literature concerning the appropriate representation of its complex nature. A sample of 414 large Brazilian exporters of manufactured products was collected, and five competing measurement models of the construct were proposed and comparatively assessed. Insights into the nature and structure of the construct are drawn. In the best fitting of the five tested models, export (venture) performance is represented as a two-dimensional construct – past export revenues and their growth, and past export profitability, with four and two operational indicators, respectively. The set of final indicators provides a reasonable coverage of several conceptual aspects of the phenomenon, namely absolute and relative measures as well as static and dynamic orientations. There is a thorough discussion of validation steps. The validation framework advanced here is generic and comprehensive enough to be employed for modeling other multifaceted constructs in the social sciences.