in industrial and organizational settings, a technique for inferring the validity of a selection test or other predictor of job performance from a job analysis. It involves systematically analyzing a job into its elements, estimating the validity of the test or predictor in predicting performance on each of these elements, and then combining the validities for each element to form an estimate of the validity of the test or predictor for the job as a whole. Synthetic validity can be useful in estimating the validity of selection procedures in small organizations where the larger samples required in concurrent validity and predictive validity are not available. See also job-component validity.