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Aiken's V Calculator: Content Validity Coefficient with Confidence Interval

How do you calculate Aiken's V?

V = S / [n(c - 1)], where S is the sum over judges of (rating - lowest scale value), n is the number of judges and c the number of scale points. It runs from 0 to 1. Five judges rating an item 4, 5, 4, 4 and 4 on a 1-5 scale give S = 16 and V = 16 / 20 = .80. Judge an item by the lower bound of its confidence interval, not by V alone.

Aiken's V is the other workhorse of content validation in theses, alongside Lawshe's CVR, and the one that works with ordinary rating scales. Its confidence interval is usually skipped because there was no easy way to compute it.

Paste each item's ratings from every judge; the calculator gives V, a score confidence interval, Aiken's exact p, and a pass or review for each item.

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Built by Muhammad Shahzeb Anwar, MSc Industrial and Organizational Psychology. Built for scale-development work in I/O and organisational research, where expert ratings come before any data are collected.

The calculator

Your items

Runs in your browser. Nothing you type is stored or sent anywhere.

Example ratings are filled in; replace them. Every item needs the same number of judges.

The confidence interval

Penfield and Giacobbi (2004) gave a score confidence interval for V that behaves well with few judges and values near 1. With nk = n x k: L = [2nkV + z2 - z√(4nkV(1 - V) + z2)] / [2(nk + z2)] and U is the same with + before the root. Fifteen judges on a 1-5 scale (nk = 60) with S = 52 give V = .867 and a 95% interval of [.758, .931]. A common rule is to accept an item if the lower bound exceeds .50 (liberal) or .70 (conservative).

Aiken's (1985) exact test asks a different question: could ratings this high arise if judges were rating at random? The calculator works out the exact distribution of the sum of n random ratings, so it does not need a table.

Aiken's V or Lawshe's CVR?

Use Lawshe's CVR when experts answer one question with three options (essential, useful, not necessary) and you want to know whether enough of them say essential. Use Aiken's V when experts rate relevance, clarity or representativeness on a scale and you want to use the whole scale, not only the top category.

Before you rely on this

What this will not tell you

V summarises expert agreement on the scale you used; it is not evidence that the item measures the construct. The exact p assumes judges rating at random and independently. One published worked example of the interval (Merino Soto and Livia Segovia, 2009) labels a 90% interval as 95%; the formula here uses the confidence level you choose. Nothing you type leaves your browser.

Questions

Questions people actually ask

What is a good Aiken's V value?

Look at the lower bound of the confidence interval rather than V alone: a lower bound above .50 is the liberal standard and above .70 the conservative one. V itself runs from 0 to 1.

What is the Aiken's V formula?

V = S / [n(c - 1)], where S is the sum of each judge's rating minus the lowest possible rating, n is the number of judges, and c is the number of rating categories.

How many judges do I need for Aiken's V?

There is no fixed minimum, but with few judges the confidence interval is wide. Five to ten judges are common; the interval shows how much uncertainty your panel leaves.

Can Aiken's V be used with a 4-point scale?

Yes. It works with any ordinal scale; set the lowest and highest points and the formula adjusts (c - 1 = 3 for a 1-4 scale).

What is the difference between Aiken's V and CVR?

CVR counts how many experts call an item essential on a three-option question; Aiken's V uses ratings on a full scale and has a confidence interval.

The papers behind the method

Sources

Formulas come from the original papers; each DOI was checked on 17 October 2026.

  1. Aiken, L. R. (1985). Three coefficients for analyzing the reliability and validity of ratings. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 45(1), 131-142: https://doi.org/10.1177/0013164485451012
  2. 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: https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327841mpee0804_3
  3. Merino Soto, C., & Livia Segovia, J. (2009). Intervalos de confianza asimetricos para el indice la validez de contenido. Anales de Psicologia, 25(1), 169-171: https://revistas.um.es/analesps/article/view/71631
Citation

Cite this tool

Free to use and free to quote. If a figure here is useful in something you are writing, a link back is all that is asked.

Muhammad Shahzeb Anwar, MSc Industrial and Organizational Psychology. Aiken's V Calculator. Shahzeb Speaks. https://www.shahzebspeaks.com/aikens-v-calculator/

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Checking whether experts call items essential?

The free Content Validity Ratio Calculator applies Lawshe's method with the exact critical values for any panel size.

Open the CVR calculator