NormingandNorm-ReferencedTestScores.PDFVIP

DOCUMENT RESUME ED 406 445 TM 026 424 AUTHOR Rodriguez, Maximo TITLE Norming and Norm-Referenced Test Scores. PUB DATE Jan 97 NOTE 25p.; Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Southwest Educational Research Association (Austin, TX, January 23-25, 1997).. PUB TYPE Reports Evaluative/Feasibility (142) Speeches /Conference Papers (150) EDRS PRICE MFO1 /PCO1 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS *Data Collection; *Error of Measurement; Identification; *Norm Referenced Tests; Norms; Sample Size; *Sampling; *Scores; *Test Construction ABSTRACT Norm-referenced tests yield information regarding a students performance in comparison to a norm or average of performance by similar students. Norms are statistics that describe the test performance of a well-defined population. The process of constructing norms, called norming, is explored briefly in this paper. Some of the most widely reported norm-referenced test scores are reviewed, and guidelines are provided for their interpretation. Nine steps for conducting a norming study, based on the work of Crocker and Algina (1986), are presented. These are: (1) identify the population of interest; (2) identify the most critical statistics that will be computed for the sample data; (3) decide on the tolerable amount of sampling error for one or more of the statistics in step 2; (4) devise a procedure for drawing a sample from the population of interest; (5) estimate the minimum sample size required to hold the sampling error within the specified limits; (6) draw the sample and collect the data; (7) compute the values of the group statistics of interest and their standard errors; (8) identify the types of normative scores that will be