Construct validity, for our purposes, refers to the rationale behind the creation of the model and its ability to recapitulate the etiology of the disorder. For instance, a model of ASD with high construct validity mimics a genetic mutation that has been observed in affected human individuals, or at least has the same molecular consequences; this can perhaps more accurately be described as pathogenic validity (Belzung and Lemoine, 2011). The determination of construct validity is difficult for genes that have a complex structure at transcriptional level.
