Compute Aiken's V with its 95% CI and I-CVI/S-CVI from your expert judges' ratings. Free content validity calculator for questionnaire validation.
Aiken's V quantifies the agreement of a panel of expert judges on the relevance of each item in an instrument: it is the content-validity evidence a validation study reports in its Method section. The calculator also returns the I-CVI per item and the two scale-level indices, S-CVI/Ave and S-CVI/UA.
V = S / [n · (c − 1)], where S = Σ(rating − lowest value), n = number of experts and c = number of scale categories (Aiken, 1985).
The 95% confidence interval uses the score method of Penfield and Giacobbi (2004), appropriate for V because it is asymmetric and bounded in [0, 1].
I-CVI = proportion of experts rating the item as relevant (at or above the threshold). S-CVI/Ave = mean of the I-CVIs. S-CVI/UA = proportion of items with I-CVI = 1 (Polit & Beck, 2006).
| Index | Cutoff |
|---|---|
| Aiken's V | ≥ .70 acceptable; ≥ .80 adequate |
| I-CVI | ≥ .78 |
| S-CVI/Ave | ≥ .90 |
Mind the lowest value of the scale: if your judges rate from 1 to 4 and the minimum is taken as 0, V comes out wrong (.667 instead of .833 in a real case from this calculator). For Lawshe’s CVR or multi-criterion indices (relevance, clarity, sufficiency), get in touch.
Aiken, L. R. (1985). Three coefficients for analyzing the reliability and validity of ratings. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 45(1), 131–142. Penfield, R. D., & Giacobbi, P. R. (2004). Applying a score confidence interval to Aiken’s item content-relevance index. Measurement in Physical Education and Exercise Science, 8(4), 213–225. Polit, D. F., & Beck, C. T. (2006). The content validity index. Research in Nursing & Health, 29(5), 489–497.
If you use it in your thesis or in a paper, cite it so that readers of your Methods section know how the calculation was done.
Ciudad-Fernández, V. (2026). Aiken's V and content validity index calculator [Web application]. Ciudad Science. Retrieved October 14, 2026, from https://analisisdedatospsicologia.com/en/tools/content-validity-calculator
For your Methods section: Content validity was quantified with Aiken's V (Aiken, 1985) and its 95% score confidence interval (Penfield & Giacobbi, 2004), computed with the Ciudad Science Aiken's V and content validity index calculator (Ciudad-Fernández, 2026).
@misc{ciudadfernandez2026vaiken,
author = {Ciudad-Fern{\'a}ndez, V{\'i}ctor},
title = {{Aiken's V and content validity index calculator}},
year = {2026},
publisher = {Ciudad Science},
howpublished = {Web application},
url = {https://analisisdedatospsicologia.com/en/tools/content-validity-calculator},
urldate = {2026-10-14},
note = {Accessed 2026-10-14},
}