Assessment, Standardized Tests

Definition of a Test

A test is “an evaluation devise or procedure in which a sample of an examinee's behaviors in a specified domain is obtained and subsequently evaluated and scored using standardized procedures” (American Educational Research Association, American Psychological Association, and National Council for Measurement in Education, 1999, p. 183). Tests may be administered to groups or individually. Group tests are less costly to use and typically acquire information about group characteristics or screen an individual's qualities. Individually administered tests typically are used to make important personal decisions as well as to help control conditions that otherwise may affect test performance adversely.

Standardized Tests

Tests may be standardized or nonstandardized. Standardized tests require test users to administer and score them in a uniform fashion. Most standardized tests also are normed on a sample of persons representative of those for whom the test is designed to be [Page 118]used. For example, tests designed to be used with adults typically are normed on a representative sample of adults stratified by age, gender, years of education or occupation, and the region of the country in which they reside. Adults who display various diagnoses (e.g., mental retardation, depression) may also be sampled in larger numbers when a test is designed for use with clinical samples. Some standardized tests are not normed (e.g., the Rorschach) and, instead, are interpreted in light of a test's theory.

Development of Standardized Norm-Referenced Tests

Considerable resources are needed to develop standardized norm-referenced tests. A scholar interested in a specific domain (e.g., intelligence) typically submits a proposal for developing a new test to a company that specializes in test development and marketing. If the project is judged to be viable and the market for such a test is thought to exist, the test author and test company sign a contract outlining the rights and responsibilities of each party. The test author typically is responsible for writing and later selecting test items and writing the manual. The test company typically is responsible for producing test materials; collecting normative and validity data; conducting studies on item statistics, reliability, and validity; and publishing, promoting, and in other ways marketing the test. This process often takes between 3 and 10 years and requires the outlay of hundreds of thousands of dollars or more.

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