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Historical Note: On Validity Measurement of Hannibal’s Crossing the ALPS

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Abstract

All human intellectual enterprises that have empirical content face the problem of validity of their constructs. Many argue that history cannot evaluate validity since the pristine events have vanished. Hannibal’s crossing the Alps is one such historical event cast in doubt by ambiguous descriptions of past and present scientific historians. However, this brief note presents three historians’ verification of Hannibal’s crossing in terms of the forms of validity conventional in psychology.

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The authors thank Norman Frankel of St. James Press and Marilyn J. Ruben for assistance on earlier versions of the manuscript.

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Mountjoy, P.T., Ruben, D.H. Historical Note: On Validity Measurement of Hannibal’s Crossing the ALPS. Psychol Rec 35, 77–80 (1985). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03394910

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03394910

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